Keep Me Where the Light Is
by JKButcher
Summary: They had made it. Following the Battle of Hogwarts, the future they dared not hope for was laid out before them. Now they had to figure out what to do with it. It would not be easy. Nothing worth doing ever is. Lives are lived, lost and altered in this canon-compliant continuation fic. Multi-POV, canon ships, absolutely no bashing. (These guys are my friends!)
1. On Edge

****Disclaimer**** : When I started writing Harry Potter fanfiction fifteen years ago, I owned nothing. That's still true.

* * *

 ** **Chapter one:****

 ** **On Edge****

* * *

The dawn of that first day had been extraordinary. Brilliantly golden, the sun shone as though it were trying to wash away years, or even decades, of darkness. For a time, it had been successful. As light streamed through broken windows, gaping holes and narrow fissures alike, the dusty haze of battle summoned forth a dazzling display of crepuscular rays that reached down into the very heart of what remained of Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. Here in the Great Hall, the sunlight had frolicked and played over the fifty-four broken bodies lined up with such obvious care down the center of the hall, and for the briefest of moments one could be forgiven for thinking that something magical – miraculous – was about to happen.

But though the fingers of the sun caressed the features of the deceased and - if one squinted __just__ so - it looked as though life had been returned to those who had sacrificed everything, Arthur Weasley had known then, as he knew now, that his family was broken and never to be whole again.

The truth of it was seated across the table from him, where his sons Bill and Charlie valiantly attempted to keep a hold of a conversation that neither of them had heard a word of for hours.

The truth of it was pacing behind him, where his son Percy strode endlessly back and forth, his pauses before turning for each return trip growing ever longer as he contemplated a flight from his guilty conscience.

The truth of it was curled up under his arm, where Molly – dearest Mollywobbles – clung tightly round his middle and wept without caring who saw, indeed, without knowing where she was.

The truth of it was taking up residence in the hole in his chest where his heart ought rightly have been.

And the truth of it was kneeling on the floor in the middle of the hall, where his son George held vigil at the head of Fred's – his son Fred's – body.

The warm and vibrant light of morning had, inevitably, yielded to the harsh and sterile light of day, the sort of light that no longer instilled confidence in miracles. The faces of the dead now looked stiff and cold, forever frozen in fear, surprise, anger, hatred or any of a dozen other emotions that seemed at odds with the celebrations happening around them. And so the mood in the Great Hall had changed as the sun continued to rise. As morning progressed, so did the mourning.

Yes, the Weasleys were broken. Just as the Prewetts had been broken. The Longbottoms, the Potters, the Bones. Arthur had known, of course, that it was inevitable. With seven children – seven wonderful willful children – all eager to stand up for what they believed in – to die for a cause that they knew to be just, he supposed he ought to consider himself lucky that it hadn't happened sooner, or – and he shuddered a bit at the thought – more often. But today he did not feel lucky.

 _ _Fred is dead.__

It didn't even seem a sensible sentence in his head. He knew what each of the words meant individually, but all bunched up together like that it seemed as incomprehensible as why aeroplanes didn't plummet back to the ground.

 _ _Fred is dead.__

He tried again, looking at the body as the words floated through his head. But still something didn't add up. He watched as sweet stubborn Ginny – his daughter Ginny – hugged George from behind, whispered something in his ear, and then struggled to support his weight as he slumped against her. Arthur had no doubt that she'd manage. If there was one thing of which he was absolutely sure, it was that Ginny was the strongest of his children – forged in the fire of six older brothers and then hardened in the crucible of a Hogwarts that had turned against her and her friends. It seemed likely that before this nightmare was over, they'd all have to lean on her more than should be fair to a sixteen year old.

 _ _So young. Too young.__ But no longer a child, despite what Molly would say. No, Ginny had earned that much at least. He'd have to talk to her about it once everyone was back home. But no – not everyone would be going home, would they?

 _ _Fred is dead.__

 _ _Dead, dead. Dead Fred. Fred is dead.__

To his horror, Arthur very nearly chuckled as the words circled around each other in his head. Some macabre children's rhyme. He felt his shoulders jumping up and down, air forced from his lungs against his will. But he'd been wrong. These were sobs, not laughter.

He should know the difference.

Fred had been laughing. Fred had always been laughing. And he'd taught the world to laugh along with him, even if the world was kicking and screaming. It had been Fred and George that had taught Molly how to laugh again after Gideon and Fabian. Fred and George who had taught Ginny to laugh again after her disastrous first year at Hogwarts. Fred and George who taught the world how to keep laughing in the face of a bleak and desperate war.

Who would teach them how to laugh now?

Arthur looked down at Molly – his wife, his partner, his heartbeat – as she continued to sob into his chest, and he felt the tears that had gathered at the tip of his nose drop noiselessly onto her shoulder. He adjusted the arm he had wrapped protectively around her so that he could run his hand through her hair. Even this, normally so radiant and alive, looked dull and faded in the harsh light, as if her tears had leeched all of the colour out of it. And still they came. Unceasingly. A veritable flood that had long ago soaked through his robes and shirt. Soaked right through his skin and was now filling up the hole where his heart had been.

He had to stop this. Had to be strong enough for his sons, for his daughter, for Molly. Strong enough to pull her up and back onto solid ground. Show the same strength that she had just hours earlier, when she had risked everything to protect her family. Arthur felt new tears welling up at the corners of his already damp eyes. They fell easier now, already having had a path laid for them by all those that had come before.

He had nearly lost her.

In a night of terrible moments, that had been the only time he'd felt fear gripping his throat, choking him into inaction, as the only woman he'd ever loved dueled to the death. Selfishly, he had wanted to be angry with her. Angry that she'd been so willing to kill him too. Because that's what would have happened. If she had died, so would he. That was their unspoken agreement, and she knew it. But he couldn't be angry. Not when he would have done – wanted to do – the same thing.

And now the fear was back, pressing down on him, nudging him closer and closer to the precipice his wife had already tumbled over. His tears followed her down, an endless waterfall of grief. And now he was close enough to see over the edge – to the pile of broken Weasleys at the bottom. And now he was teetering at the edge of the abyss.

 _ _Fred is dead. Dead, dead. Dead Fred.__

 _ _Fred is dead. Dead, dead. Dead Fred.__

 _ _It should have been me.__

And he fell.

There was a hand on his shoulder. It seemed a curious thing to have on his shoulder as he cartwheeled into despair. He reached his free hand up shakily, intending to try and brush it off. There was no need for anyone to get dragged down with him. But as soon as his hand touched the one on his shoulder, he found that he was instead scrabbling with his fingers to grab hold of the lifeline he'd been offered. An eternity of fumbling later, and he had a firm hold of it. He gasped for air, not realizing that he'd stopped breathing. The hand holding his gave a gentle squeeze, and Arthur looked back over his shoulder.

"Thank you," he gasped, still trying to catch his breath. Ron stood there with a grim smile on his face. His son Ron.

"All right there, Dad?" The question was quiet. A whisper meant only for him. Worry tugged down at the corners of Ron's eyes, and Arthur knew that this __had__ to be the moment. He'd been given a second chance to be strong for his family. He didn't intend to waste it.

"Better now, I think." He tried to offer Ron a smile of reassurance, but found that he couldn't make his mouth move in the required fashion. __One step at a time__ , he reminded himself. "Where's Hermione?" he asked, in order to give his mouth a task that it was capable of. He hadn't seen the two of them more than an arm's length apart since – sweet Merlin, it had to have been some time before they'd been glued to each other on the dance floor at Bill and Fleur's wedding. Arthur found himself wondering just how much their relationship had progressed while they'd been on the run.

"She-" began Ron, and Arthur could tell that his youngest son was nervous. __Probably about me__. "She and Harry are up in the Gryffindor common room." He looked almost guilty as he answered, and he glanced at Molly and over at where George and Ginny still sat next to Fred's body. "I'm sorry that we took off like that, there was-"

"No." There was more force behind Arthur's objection than he had intended. He sighed softly before continuing. "There's nothing to apologize for." Ron looked like he wanted to interject, but Arthur pressed on. "Life goes o- no – wrong platitude." He felt Molly shake convulsively up against him. Was it because of what he'd said? Was she still present and listening, or was she off somewhere drowning in grief? "You're here now, and I daresay the three of you have earned the benefit of the doubt. What with you being heroes and all."

"Harry's the hero," countered Ron, automatically. Arthur opened his mouth to insist otherwise, but closed it without speaking. The boy would figure it out on his own quite quickly, he was sure. "I was hoping – we – we were hoping that all of you would come up with us. We've got some food, and – and I think Mum and George and – well, they could use a change of scenery."

 _ _And me.__

That's what had gone unsaid. What would always remain unsaid, and for that Arthur was grateful. He was also grateful for the suggestion. Ron was quite right, there was no hope of Molly or George improving if they were to continue to sit here. Not with the ultimate reminder lying face up and unblinking just feet away.

"Yes, I suspect that we could all do with some food, and then -" Arthur tried to stifle a yawn, but was unsuccessful, "a bit of a kip, I think. Been a long night." He unwound his arm from Molly, and let go of Ron's hand. He prised his wife's from around his middle, and attempted to sit her upright.

"A long day yesterday, too," added Ron. "Broke into Gringotts, rode a dragon -"

"You did what?" Arthur glanced across the table to where Bill and Charlie had spoken at the same time and were now looking at Ron with their mouths agape.

"Well, it turned out being easier to break into Gringotts than it was to get back out again," offered Ron by way of explanation. "But I really shouldn't have said anything," he added sheepishly. Arthur couldn't see him, but was sure his ears had gone red. Bill and Charlie immediately launched into a series of whispered questions that Arthur ignored.

"Molly," he urged softly, giving her shoulder a gentle shake. She had slumped back into him once he had removed his supporting hands from her. A loud groan was the only response he elicited. "Molly," he tried again a bit louder, "we need to move. Do you think you can walk?" Another groan, and Arthur found himself frowning. He pushed her upright again, and signaled for Ron to put his hands on her shoulders to keep her upright while he got up off of the bench seat he'd occupied for what now seemed an eternity.

"I'm sorry guys, I really can't say anymore right now!" Ron was clearly getting exasperated by the barrage of questions from his older brothers, and the color had crept from his ears to his cheeks. "Maybe after I've had a chance to discuss it with Harry and Hermione. We'll need to figure out just what we can share, and – well-" Ron broke off, looking very guilty about something.

"That'll do, thanks." Arthur nudged Ron to the side after stretching his legs, and he placed his hands underneath Molly's arms. He hoisted her out of her seat, dragging her feet indelicately across the bench in the process. She was completely limp. He swung her around so that she was facing the nearest wall. He wanted her looking anywhere but at the line of bodies bisecting the hall, but there was a large stair-step crack running diagonally up through the masonry of the wall to serve as an unneeded reminder of what had happened here.

"Arthur," she moaned, "I can't." He was inclined to agree. The moment that he'd lowered her onto her feet, her knees had buckled and the arms he still had around her took her full weight once more.

"Thankfully, you won't have to," he said, trying to calm his own nerves as much as her own. "I do believe my vows said something about sharing your load." Under more normal circumstances, Arthur was sure that he'd have been swatted for implying that his wife was a load, but she made no complaint as he bent down and repositioned his right arm under the backs of her knees. Ron strode forward quickly with his arms out.

"Here, let me."

"I'm quite capable of carrying my wife, though your sister could probably use a hand with you brother." Arthur hadn't been sure it was true when he'd started to speak, but found that he was indeed able to carry Molly quite easily. He nodded in the direction of where Ginny had gotten up and was attempting to pull a stubbornly protesting George to his feet. Ron hurried over to help.

Arthur turned carefully, making sure his wife's head had clearance from the cracked wall. Percy stood watching them from the end of the Gryffindor table where they'd been sitting, nervously fingering the end of his sleeve. He still looked just as guilty as he had when he'd carried Fred's body into the Great Hall hours before, and Arthur knew that he was blaming himself, unnecessarily, for Fred's death. But he also knew, from years of experience, that trying to absolve Percy of his guilt would only make it worse.

"Come on Percy, let's go have some breakfast." The invitation hung heavily in the air between them, as Percy looked first at a spot just to the right of Arthur's eyes, then down at his feet. Arthur turned towards where his two eldest sons had also stood up, intending to extend the same invitation, but his voice failed him when he saw the look that Charlie was giving Percy.

To this point, there had been little more than a stiff hug between the two of them, as Charlie hadn't been present at the all-too-brief reunion when Percy had surprised everyone by turning up before the battle. He hadn't seen the apologies, the tears, or Fred's hand extended in acceptance. Arthur knew that that had been an integral part of his own, and everyone ease's, forgiveness.

But now, there was a grin playing at the corners of Charlie's mouth, and something that very much looked like respect in his eyes. He nodded slightly, as if trying to convince himself of something.

"Yeah, come on Perce," Charlie said finally, striding to the end of the table and clapping a calloused and blistered hand on Percy's slouched back. Percy looked up with confusion writ large across his face, but slowly it turned into embarrassment as Charlie nodded in Arthur and Molly's direction and whispered something that Arthur couldn't make out.

He had missed something, he was sure of it. And not just the whisper. Percy had done __something__ to win over Charlie – something just outside the range of his vision. Arthur wasn't used to missing much. Between Molly and himself, he liked to think that they were generally much more aware of what was going on in the family than they let on. Well, than he let on anyway. Molly did have a tendency to want to involve herself in just about everything. He looked down at her nestled up against his left shoulder, hoping that she'd perhaps caught what he'd missed, but her eyes were closed.

No, for now at least, he was on his own. The fierce dervish of a woman he loved was buried under a mountain of grief. He could move that mountain, of that he was sure, but it felt as though he was wielding little more than a teaspoon.

Ahead of him, Percy was being shepherded from the Great Hall by Charlie, and George was making his way unsteadily between Ron and Bill, an arm thrown over each's shoulder. Behind his five sons, Ginny was linked arm-in-arm with Fleur – his daughter-in-law Fleur – and they were leaning heavily on each other. Arthur fell in behind the girls, determined not to look back as he passed through the doors to the entrance hall.

Yes, maybe he wasn't as alone as he thought. Maybe they each had a teaspoon and they'd be digging out together.

* * *

It had been a very long time since Arthur Weasley had been in the Gryffindor common room, but in its basic layout and amenities it hadn't really changed much. The fire was still as cheerful and inviting as it once had been, the armchairs and couches were every bit as overstuffed and squashy, and he was sure that if you were to push aside that tapestry of the house crest over next to the announcement board you'd find 'Arthur Weasley loves Molly Prewett' scratched into the very stones of the tower. But there were also differences.

He didn't recall there being a gaping hole in the tower wall just to the right of the staircase to the girls' dormitories, for one.

The anti-muggleborn propaganda and a detention schedule as long as his arm stuck to the announcement board also bore silent witness to the fact that the Hogwarts that Ginny had attended this year was a far cry from the one that he had such fond memories of. Other notices tacked onto the board included what appeared to be a wanted poster for Neville Longbottom offering an O in the O.W.L. or N.E.W.T. subject of the informant's choice, a list of banned books that included three accounts of the first war against Voldemort and every Defense Against the Dark Arts book they'd had to buy for the kids, and a newspaper clipping from the Daily Prophet with leering pictures of the Carrows under the headline 'New Professors' Unique Educational Reforms are Revolutionizing Learning.'

With a sigh, Arthur grabbed the newspaper clipping and gave it a tug, intending to toss it into the fire, but found that it resisted his every effort to remove it from the board. "Permanent sticking charm," Ginny offered unnecessarily from where she was seated next to George on one of the couches nearest the fire. Arthur glanced back at her and saw the hardened look in her eyes - a look that didn't belong on the face of a girl her age, and he found himself wondering how many times she'd found herself on the detention list. Dozens, if he knew his daughter. If she hadn't been pulled out of school over Easter, he was sure that her wanted poster would be up there next to Neville's.

With a swelling pride, he let go of the newsprint, and instead placed a hand on either side of the announcement board's frame. He once again gave a sharp tug, and was gratified when the entire thing came loose from the wall causing him to stumble backwards a step. Unceremoniously, he marched over to the new hole in the wall and tossed the board out of it. He didn't bother watching to see where it landed.

"If you are done wiz ze redecorating, why do you not come sit? You can have my spot." Fleur was seated at the end of a couch and had her arms around Molly, whose head was on the Frenchwoman's shoulder. Bill had deposited her there after Arthur had had to pass her through the portrait hole just minutes before. Arthur had the good sense to realize he was being chided gently by his daughter-in-law, and he hurried over to take her place.

Fleur was absolutely right. His place tonight, and for the foreseeable future, was at his wife's side. No, that wasn't quite right, was it? His place was always at his wife's side - but right now it was imperative that she have him to lean on. While removing her from the Great Hall had stemmed the flow of her tears, Molly was still listless and silent. As he settled his weight into the couch beside her, she sighed sadly and looked up at him as she lowered her head onto his shoulder.

He should say something. He knew her well enough to know that she was looking for some sort of reassurance. But what could he say? What did you tell a mother who had just lost a son? Certainly not that everything would be alright; those words rang hollow even in his head. But something had to be said. As he contemplated whether or not his moment had passed, he realized that the room was silent and looking at him expectantly.

"Mr. Weasley - Mrs. Weasley, I-" it was Harry that had broken the silence. Brave, selfless, shy Harry. His son Harry. "I'm sorry about - about Fred." He was seated by himself in a corner of the common room, a good deal away from where Ron and Hermione were seated tightly together and looking at him worriedly, and Arthur once again felt as though he had missed something.

"I never wanted - I'd hoped - I'm-"

"Harry, you don't have to-" He heard Hermione's whispered attempt to release Harry from finishing his thought, but Harry waved her off.

"I'm grateful," he finally managed to get out. The portion of his face visible beneath the accumulated soot and grime of battle and who-knew-what else seemed to relax at his confession, and he sat up a little straighter. This last, however, only served to highlight just how skinny and frail the boy was. The stirring at Arthur's side told him that Molly had seen this as well.

"You - all of you - have sacrificed so much for me over the years. You've fed me and clothed me, given me a place to stay, willingly put yourselves in danger. I just -" The common room was silent as Harry once again found himself searching for the right words. Arthur glanced around and saw that Hermione was wiping her eyes with her palms as Ron patted her back awkwardly, Percy was trying to blend into the furniture and disappear, and Ginny - well, he wasn't quite sure what to make of Ginny's expression. Beside him, he heard Molly sniffle, and she sat up straighter, removing her head from his shoulder.

"After everything that you've done for me, I - you deserve so much better than this - better than me." There was a sharp intake of breath from assorted Weasleys around the room, and Arthur could feel several pairs of eyes turning to him in anticipation of his rebuke, but he needed them to see what he could feel happening next to him. He caught Ginny's eye and shook his head almost imperceptibly before inclining his head toward Molly. His wife's breathing had sped up, and he knew the explosion would come soon if Harry would just keep saying such silly things. Ginny crossed her arms over her chest in protest, but didn't say anything.

For his part, Harry looked nonplussed by the silence that surrounded him, and Arthur felt the first pangs of guilt at letting him continue to stammer his way through - whatever this was. The boy clearly needed the 'it's not your fault' treatment.

"It just isn't - I don't think it's fair that I'm - I'm still here, and Fred, who - you know - laughter. And Colin and Tonks. And - and Lupin. And all the others." Harry was shifting very uneasily in his seat now, and Arthur could tell that he was on the verge of rushing from the room. He had let things go too far, and opened his mouth to stop Harry from going any further.

Smack.

"Arthur Weasley, I'm ashamed of you!" cried Molly as she got shakily to her feet. Arthur rubbed the back of his head which had borne the brunt of his wife's attack, and tried very hard not to smirk. "How could you just sit there and listen as Harry spouted off such nonsense." She was bustling across the gap towards where Harry was still sitting with a rather confused look. "Up," she commanded him. "Up you get." Harry looked imploringly at Ron who just shrugged and wore an apologetic 'I tried to warn you' grin. Looking very much like he wished he'd made a break for it when he had the chance, Harry rose.

"Mrs. Weasley, I'm-" But whatever Harry was, it was left unsaid as his words were squeezed out of him by Molly.

"You are my son, same as all the others."

"But-"

"No, don't protest, just listen. From the moment Ron sent me that letter during your first year begging me to knit you a jumper for Christmas because he didn't expect your Aunt and Uncle would get you anything, you've been mine. Ours, rather. I know I'm not the only Weasley to feel this way." Molly unwrapped her arms from around Harry, and placed her hands roughly on his shoulders and gave him a shake.

"And then you have the gall - the absolute __gall__ \- to suggest that I am somehow going to think less of you because of what happened last night. As if it were somehow your fault and yours alone that Fred and fifty-some odd others are dead."

"Mrs. Weasley, can I-"

"No, no you can not. You need to hear this, and I'm only going to say it once." Molly took her right hand off of Harry's shoulder and used it to hold his face such that he had no other option but to look at her. "You didn't have a choice in all of this. If anything isn't fair, it's that. You were forced to be 'The Chosen One,' and you had __so__ much taken from you - your parents, your childhood, love and friendship, any expectation of safety - we did what we could to provide you with some semblance of normalcy, but -"

"Thanks."

"You're very welcome Dear, but that's besides the point. You __had__ to be here. Everybody else had a choice to make. I can't speak for anyone else, but I can tell you that I was fighting to ensure my family would have a chance - just a __chance__ \- at happiness."

"I was fighting to take Hogwarts back from Snape and the Carrows," offered Ginny hotly. Arthur glanced over at her to find that she was still glaring at him, apparently upset that he'd let the situation escalate to this point.

"I was fighting against the injustices perpetrated by the Ministry against muggle-borns," spat Hermione quietly. Her shining eyes flashed white in the glare of the late morning light streaming in through Gryffindor tower's newest window.

"Thank you, girls." Molly released Harry's face and returned her hand to his shoulder, but didn't shake him further. "No one here died for __you__ Harry. They died in service of their own goals, be that protecting their family or their way of life. We fought __with__ you, not for you. Given that choice again, I'm sure we'd all choose to do the same once more. But thanks to you, we won't have to face that choice."

Arthur watched as Harry stared blankly up into Molly's face, his eyes blinking furiously. "But if I'd just gone sooner, then-" Arthur heard Bill groan from a chair he was now sharing with Fleur, and couldn't help but agree. Harry was every bit as stubborn as - well, as a Weasley.

"It's not your fault," insisted Molly quietly.

"I could have saved more people!"

"It's not your fault. Come on, I need to hear you say it."

"I never meant for any of this to happen!" Tears were shining in Harry's eyes now, and his hands were clenched tightly into fists at his sides. "He wanted me. No one else needed to die."

"It's not your fault."

"Why did I get to come back and no one else?" A tear fell slowly down Harry's cheek as he whispered the question to the room at large. Arthur looked up sharply. Come back? Surely he didn't mean -

"It's not your fault," whispered Molly earnestly, though she too looked shaken by what Harry had just inadvertently implied.

"It was always meant to be me." Their conversation was growing fainter, and Arthur found himself leaning forward and hanging on every word.

"Repeat after me: it's not your fault."

"It should have been me."

"Harry." Silence stretched from second to second as no one dared to breathe.

"It's not my fault?" This was barely a whisper. So soft Arthur thought he might not have heard it at all, but rather read it off of Harry's lips.

"It's not your fault," confirmed Molly, pulling Harry back in for another hug.

"It's not my fault," he repeated, and even though Arthur could still see a shadow of doubt in his eyes, he knew that the message had sunk in.

"And now you need to eat something! You're practically a skeleton!" chided Molly. "I can feel your ribs poking into me every time I hug you. And you as well Hermione," she added, turning towards where Ron was hugging the openly crying young woman and nervously patting her head. "It looks as though a good stiff breeze would do you in. Come, eat."

Molly busied herself with preparing plates of sandwiches and fruit for everyone from the platters set up on the coffee table in front of the fire. Arthur wasn't sure where it had come from, but felt reasonably confident that a house elf had been involved in its delivery. Just one more minor mystery in a year chock full of them. Though at the moment, most of his thoughts were on Harry's whispered acknowledgment that he'd 'come back.' Did that mean there was something or somewhere to come back from? Was Fred there now?

He was lost in thought when he felt the couch sink a bit next to him, and he looked over to see that Molly had rejoined him carrying two plates. She handed one to him with a sigh. "You were using him."

"It was for a good cause," he insisted, grabbing one of the ham sandwiches on his plate and taking a bite. Lots of mustard, just how he liked it.

"Do you have any idea how many good causes that poor boy has been used for in his life? I'd have hoped we could be the ones above all of that." Molly lifted her own sandwich to her mouth and took a small bite.

"I know you're right, Molly, but-"

"And don't you forget it!"

"But," Arthur pressed on, ignoring the bait, "I'm honestly just relieved to see you back from wherever it is you were earlier. You had me a bit scared there for a moment. Thought I'd have to give Harry the talk myself, and you always were much better at this one than I was. I'd have needed another three or four 'it's not your faults.'"

"How long did I have?"

"My mouth was open when you smacked me."

"Yes, well - you always did have more patience than me." Molly leaned over and kissed him briefly on the cheek, and the first real smile Arthur had had the pleasure of feeling spread across his features in days, was mirrored on the face of his better half.

"Are we alright?" he asked, his smile fading. He was feeling guilty about the moment of levity, and he glanced over at George, who was moodily staring into the fire as Ginny valiantly kept up a one-sided conversation beside him.

"Of course not," Molly scoffed, picking her sandwich up again. "But we will be. But if I learned one thing from Gideon and Fabian - from Fred too - it's that laughter is absolutely essential to getting through rough times like this. Gives you hope that there might be a chance things get better. And they will."

"The chance at happiness you were fighting for?"

"Grandkids. Lots of grandkids."

"I think Bill and Fleur are ready," agreed Arthur, glancing at the married couple cuddled together in a chair that was technically too small for them. Not that either of them seemed to notice or mind. "But after that, you may be waiting for a while."

"I am much more comfortable with that today than I was yesterday."

"Everything is going to change, isn't it?"

"Everything already has," Molly whispered sadly. Arthur nodded slowly, thinking about one very large change in particular.

"I might need the 'it's not your fault' conversation at some point." Molly turned to look at him, and he could see, for the briefest of moments, a look of fear in her eyes, but then it was gone - replaced by endless sorrow.

"Only if you agree to do the same for me."

"Fred?" Molly silently stared out into space for nearly a minute, and Arthur was beginning to wonder if he'd have to launch into the talk right here and now.

"Not Fred. Bellatrix." Whatever he had been expecting, it certainly wasn't that, and Arthur's surprise was betrayed by his audible gasp at the name of the witch his wife had killed just hours earlier. She looked up sharply at his reaction, and he was startled to see that there were once again tears in her eyes.

"Merlin, Mollywobbles, I-"

"Don't call me that. Not today. I __killed__ someone this morning."

"You were protecting your family - bloody hell - she was a monster, Molly!" Arthur's voice was rising now, and he could feel, rather than hear, all the separate conversations in the common room pausing to listen in. Molly looked very much like she wanted to chide him for his language, but she bit her tongue and looked imploringly at her husband. "Fine," he sighed, settling back into the couch and taking the final bite of his sandwich.

"Thank you." Molly looked down at the half eaten sandwich on her plate, then bent forward to put it down on the coffee table in front of them. "I'm not terribly hungry just at the moment."

"You know it's not your fault, right?" Arthur asked gently, hoping that their audience couldn't hear. Molly gave him a wry smile and an eye roll in response. "No one is going to blame you for what you did. In fact, I'd wager you'll be hailed as a-"

"Don't say hero. I'll hex you if you ever so much as insinuate that I'm a hero. Not for that."

"You were trying to protect your family, there is heroism in that." Arthur knew that he was pressing his luck, but he was absolutely sure that if he let this fester in Molly for much longer it would lead to something very ugly down the road.

"Sure," she allowed, and Arthur relaxed his guard slightly, no longer expecting the promised hexing, "but is that really what I was doing?"

"Of course, you-"

"I'm not so sure. I could have done as much with a disarming spell, or a stunner." She dropped her head into her hands and rubbed at her temples before continuing. "Merlin, even Harry brought down You-know-who with expelliarmus. __Expelliarmus__ of all things! But I was __angry__ , Arthur. More angry than - than I can ever remember being. And I - I wanted blood." This last revelation was spoken barely above a whisper, and Arthur shivered slightly, finding himself suddenly chilled in spite of the fire nearby.

"I don't think any less of you for it," he said, trying to pull himself together quickly. It wouldn't do to let Molly see that he was unnerved.

"Of course you don't. But you're not the one I'm going to see in the mirror tomorrow morning when I wake up."

"Of course you will. I'll be right beside you, same as always." There was the wry smile again, though he hadn't earned an eye roll this time.

"You're very sweet Arthur, but that's not what I mean, and you know it. It just - it scares me to know that I'm capable of doing something like that."

"We've all done things that we aren't proud of, Molly. But we can't let them define who we are." He set his own plate on the table next to his wife's, then reached over with both hands to take hers in his. "Because that __isn't__ who you are. The very fact that you're feeling remorse about killing someone who would have slaughtered our entire family and laughed while she did it - you aren't her, and you will never be her."

Molly stared directly up into his eyes for a few moments, and he felt her give his hands a squeeze. Just like with Harry, she didn't look entirely convinced, but Arthur was sure she was in a better place than she had been just minutes before.

"Besides," he added light-heartedly, "you've made my job easier. Can you imagine the look on Ginny's future boyfriend's face when he comes to pick her up for a date and I tell him to have her back by eleven or else I'll turn my wife - slayer of Bellatrix Lestrange - loose on him?"

"You really think Harry would be that scared of me?"

"Harry? Harry Potter? Really? You're putting me on."

"Not at all. I don't know the whole story, but something happened there just before last summer. Ginny was very out of sorts when we picked her up off the Hogwarts Express."

"She seemed fine to me," Arthur grumbled with a scowl. If Harry and Ginny - no, of course they hadn't. But there was no denying that Ginny had been behaving a bit strangely with respect to Harry all morning.

"Oh Arthur, don't be silly. It would be fantastic if they were together! He probably just ended it to keep her safe while he was on the run with Ron and Hermione." Arthur found himself looking carefully at Harry as he sat isolated in his corner. He looked very much alone and thoroughly miserable.

"That - that does seem like something he would do," allowed Arthur begrudgingly.

"You mark my words," Molly paused to yawn before finishing her thought, "inside of two weeks we'll be chasing them out of the pantry with a broom." Arthur groaned, then stifled a yawn of his own. "And you will be __happy__ for them Arthur, do you hear me?

Arthur thought back to his Great Hall resolution to treat Ginny like the adult she'd proven herself to be, of the years of happiness that the universe owed Harry, and of his daughter's anguished scream at the sight of Harry's lifeless body in Hagrid's arms just last night. Yes, Molly was right, there was something there.

"You know what?" he asked sincerely. "I will be happy. They deserve each other."

"And there's the man I love." His wife leaned over and kissed his cheek again, then made to get up off the couch. "Time for that kip, I think."

"Do you need me to carry you up?"

"Arthur, you couldn't carry me up the stairs if you wanted to."

"I'm pretty sure McGonagall removed the enchantment on the stairs to allow the fighters up to the top."

"That's not what I meant. You're just oblivious, aren't you?"

"What are you on about? I carried you all the way up from the Great Hall, didn't I?"

"Only because Percy put a lightening charm on me before you picked me up." Arthur sat silently for a moment, gaping at his wife. "Close your mouth, dear. It's not a good look for you."

"I - I suppose that explains a lot," he stammered as things began to fall into place in his mind. Percy hadn't been fiddling nervously with his sleeve at all, he'd been stashing his wand. And that's why Charlie had warmed to him. "I'm feeling a bit foolish just at the moment," he admitted.

"Sorry to destroy your illusions, dear. But we're not as young as we used to be. Besides, I'm happy just knowing that you __did__ carry me up those stairs to your dorm once before." Arthur felt himself begin to blush, but the guilt was also rising in him. Once again he was on the verge of smiling when by rights, he should be doing anything but.

Was there something wrong with him? Had he not loved Fred as much as he should have? George certainly wasn't smiling.

He was glad when Molly got up off the couch and started to shepherd everyone up the stairs to an open bed. He hoisted himself up out of the couch with far more effort than he remembered being necessary when he was eighteen - were the couches lower to the ground?

At the base of the stairs up to the boys' dormitories there was a hushed and frantic conversation taking place between Ron and Hermione. He watched as he rounded up the plates that his family had used to eat. No sense in leaving more work for some poor house elf.

At first he had thought they were fighting over whether or not Hermione was going to sleep up in the boys' dorms with Ron and Harry, but that didn't seem to fit the body language. It didn't really seem like they were fighting at all, now that he was watching properly. Hermione rose up onto her tiptoes, gave Ron a quick peck, and then turned and sat back down in the common room. Well that was odd.

Arthur gave Ron enough time to scamper up the stairs after Harry, then coming to a decision, sat down in a chair opposite Hermione, who looked startled to see him.

"Not tired?"

"Mr. - Mr. Weasley, I -"

"Didn't know I was still down here?" he ventured. "I hope you're not embarrassed about the kiss, I'm happy for you and Ron." Hermione's cheeks coloured slightly, but she didn't speak. "If you don't mind my saying so, you look absolutely exhausted. I'm sure no one would mind if you went up and slept with the boys."

"Mr. Weasley!" her once slightly rosy cheeks blazed red, and she sounded scandalized. Arthur realized his mistake.

"Sorry. I'm tired too. Didn't mean anything by it, I assure you."

"It's alright. I'm sorry about Fred," she whispered, the colour draining out of her face.

"Thank you." It didn't really seem an appropriate response, but there really wasn't anything else to say, was there? The two sat in uncomfortable silence for a moment as Arthur pondered why she was still down in the common room. But then it hit him like a well-placed bludger. "You're on guard duty, aren't you?"

Hermione nodded, and looked slightly embarrassed. "Old habits die hard, I guess," she said with a shy smile and a glance back at the stairway behind her.

"I don't think the remaining Death Eaters are going to make a play for Harry today without the benefit of having had time to plan an attack. It'll be smart to stay on guard in the future, but I think you've earned a bit of a lie-in."

"Unfortunately, it isn't the Death Eaters I'm worried about," she admitted after a moment's contemplation. Arthur said nothing, but invited her to continue by sitting back into the chair. "I - oh this is silly. There's so much that I feel like I can't talk about yet, but Harry did announce it to the whole world, so -" she glanced quickly around the common room as though ensuring that there was no one else present to overhear their conversation.

"Don't feel obligated to tell me something you think you shouldn't."

"It's not that. Like I said, Harry already let this particular cat out of the bag." She took a deep breath to steel herself, then dove right in. "Harry is the master of the Elder Wand - the Deathstick - and while he is in possession of it, he's much more likely to be attacked by anyone who's looking to obtain it. The thing's history is littered with wizards who were attacked in their sleep after they bragged about having it. So you can see why it was probably unwise to bring it up during his showdown with Vo- Tom Riddle. Not that I blame him of course, he was trying to get under his skin, want he?"

"I have questions." So many questions.

"We're working on a plan to get rid of it. That's really the only answer I can give right now, I'm sorry."

"And you have Ron up there putting some sort of protection on it right now?"

"Well, he'll wait until Harry falls asleep, but yes." She looked over at the stairs nervously. "Maybe I should -" she paused and pushed her weight forward in the chair she was occupying. She stayed poised on the point of getting up for a moment clearly arguing with herself. "No, he'll be fine," she finally said with a shake of her head. She slumped back into the chair.

"That isn't quite everything though, is it?" asked Arthur gently before she'd had a chance to get lost in her own thoughts. Hermione's eyes narrowed questioningly, and she quirked her head slightly to the left.

"I'm not sure I follow, Mr. Weasley."

"You've been treating Harry like he's made of glass all morning. You and Ron are taking it in shifts to never leave him on his own, you won't let him in on your efforts to protect this wand of his, and you were clearly very worried about him as he was sitting over there in the corner by himself." Hermione stared at Arthur as though he had two heads, and he knew that he was pressing too hard. "Look," he began, intending to walk the tension back a bit, "I really don't intend to pry - no - clearly that's not true, as here we sit." He reached up to rub his thinning hair in frustration.

Hermione bit her lip across from him. "You want to know if you're in danger of losing a second son."

And there it was.

"You always were the clever one," Arthur said with a sigh. "Yes, that is the crux of it, I think. Are you down here on watch to make sure that Harry doesn't leave?" Hermione's eyes were over-bright, and she looked away towards the hole in the common room wall. Very slowly, she nodded, then wiped her eyes on her sleeve.

"He was gone. The last time we left him alone. I don't - I can't -"

"But he came back?" She snapped her head back around to look at him, but remained silent. "What he said to Molly - 'why did I get to come back?' - does it mean what I think it means?"

"No. Too far, Mr. Weasley. That's not my story to tell," she said firmly. "I'm sorry, and I understand you're looking for some sort of confirmation because of Fred, but that story is Harry's and Harry's alone. And I'd appreciate it if you didn't bring it up again. With me, with Ron, or especially with Harry. Not right now."

Arthur held up his hands as though in surrender, and felt the tears welling up in his eyes. She was absolutely right. He had gone too far. Too far in search of answers to questions that he hadn't even known he'd had. But she had known. Of course that had been what he was after. Some glimmer of hope that it was possible to see Fred again. She had seen right through him, just like Molly would have.

"Harry and Ron are very lucky to have you. We all are." He got slowly to his feet and walked across the gap to where she sat. He reached out and put a hand on her shoulder, and he was gratified when she didn't flinch or pull away. He hadn't done any lasting harm this morning.

"Were it not for the fact that you've still got parents, I'd be honored to call you my daughter too." Hermione's face scrunched up and she lifted a shaking hand to her mouth. She looked as though she desperately wanted to say something, but the words wouldn't come.

"Thank you for bringing my boys home to me," he said quietly, and he turned and walked up the stairs to find his wife as Hermione sobbed softly behind him.


	2. The Hospital Wing

**Disclaimer:** Though I share two initials with J.K. Rowling, I'm afraid that's all we share. Everything worth owning is hers.

* * *

 **Chapter Two:**

 **The Hospital Wing**

* * *

"Poppy, I really must insist that you leave the hospital wing!"

"Not bloody likely."

"I need you at your best, and I'm not going to get that unless you take a break!" Minerva McGonagall, despite her height, was having difficulty keeping up with the diminutive matron as she whipped around the dozens of haphazardly conjured beds that were strewn about the hospital wing. "An hour or two, that's all I ask. Surely you can let the St. Mungo's healers take care of things for that long?"

"Oh, for the love of Merlin!" Poppy swung left around the foot of a bed that contained a violently shivering Lisa Turpin, and held out her hand to a lime green clad witch who was measuring out a draught of a violently pink potion. "Here. Give it here." The mediwitch looked from the graduated flask in her hand to the onrushing Poppy Pomfrey, and, to Minerva's great surprise, rather than quailing beneath the matron's frightful gaze and surrendering the potion, she withdrew both the flask and the bottle of potion closer to her body.

"She's freezing, Madam Pomfrey!"

"I can see that." Minerva looked down at the seventh year Ravenclaw girl as Poppy answered. Her chattering teeth were clicking loudly, and her arms were folded tightly around herself, attempting to hold in as much warmth as she could, but her eyes stared blankly out into space. Not for the first time that morning, the de facto headmistress of Hogwarts - what remained of Hogwarts - felt a pang of regret.

"What's your name?" demanded Poppy, careening to a halt half a pace from the witch, whose confidence appeared to be shrinking. Minerva was beginning to understand why she'd been approached by a St. Mungo's representative about removing Poppy from the hospital wing for a while.

"F-Fields. Marcia Fields," stammered the mediwitch. "I'm administering two - two drachms of the Phlogiston philter which will warm up the patient and ease the shivering."

"Yes, I suspect she'd not only stop shivering, but stop moving altogether. As she'd be quite dead." As she spoke, Poppy conjured a great mass of blankets from the air over Lisa Turpin's body, and with a neat flick of her wand, caused them to spread flat as they floated gently down to cover her. Minerva was momentarily touched to find that Poppy had used blankets in the Ravenclaw colors of blue and bronze, but her attention was quickly drawn back to the disagreement at hand.

"A simple warming potion isn't going to kill her Madam Pomfrey, and it'll work much faster than the blankets, I assure you." Mediwitch Fields brought the bottle of potion and the flask back up to eye level and continued to measure out her intended two drachm dosage.

"Could you remind me why Ms. Turpin here is currently in the state she is?" asked Poppy, still staring like a hawk at the Phlogiston philter.

"Acute poisoning by way of Acromantula bite on the-"

"Yes, yes," the Matron interrupted impatiently, "and what are the Phlogiston philter's three main ingredients?" The mediwitch stopped her measuring and looked curiously at Poppy with her eyes narrowed, as she appeared to reach back into her memory for the answer.

"Let's see - Graphorn horn, Wortizome and -" Marcia Fields blanched suddenly, and, shaking, placed the potion and flask down on a cart she had beside her.

"Acromantula venom, precisely." Poppy flicked her wrist, and the already dispensed potion arced gracefully back up and into its original bottle, before the stopper rattled its way free of the mess of other phials and ampoules on the cart and slammed itself home, sealing the bottle. "Probably best not to put even more of that nastiness into her system just at the moment. Do you not agree?"

"I-I'll go get a - a bed warmer and some coals from the fire," Mediwitch Fields pledged, nodding absently. She pushed past Poppy and Minerva, causing the latter to stumble slightly at the unexpected contact. She reached out with a hand to catch herself on the bed adjacent to that of Lisa Turpin's, and quickly righted herself. She hoped that Poppy hadn't seen; that was the very last thing she needed right now. Unfortunately, when she straightened and faced her old friend, it was to find that the matron was looking at her with a scowl on her face.

"My wing. My patients. They. get. me." Each brief pause was emphasized with a downward thrust of Poppy's wand, and sparks scattered under the adjacent beds as she finished emphatically. Her face was screwed up into a defiant glare, as though begging for the head of Gryffindor to object, and Minerva knew that there was no way that she'd get what she had been asking for.

"Fair enough," she allowed, offering an olive branch. "I suppose that you have more experience with the particular injuries and maladies that Hogwarts and it's environs can facilitate." Poppy scoffed, and Minerva was worried to see that her eyes darkened even further.

"When I took this job thirty-five years ago, I knew that there would be some unusual situations that would crop up." Poppy sighed sadly and placed a hand gently on Lisa Turpin's forehead. "It's the nature of the job. Untrained magic users, dangerous creatures, Quidditch - all part and parcel." She turned on her heel and began walking briskly once more, leaving Minerva to squeeze up against the bed she'd caught herself on to stay out of her way.

"But the last few years," she continued, as Minerva once again hastened to follow - as best she could anyway - "it's all gotten a bit ridiculous. Dementors, dragons, Acromantulas - yes, I know the one in the maze was milked, but there's still a whole colony of them out there - we had a ruddy Basilisk, Minerva!"

A sudden blood curdling scream rang out from somewhere much nearer the entrance to the hospital wing, and both Poppy and Minerva wheeled around with their wands leveled at the source of the noise. The taller witch felt a sharp burst of pain radiate down her right leg she did so, but managed to grit her teeth to keep from crying out. She had hoped that it would have been better by now.

"Who administered Skele-Gro to Professor Vector?" shouted the matron, glaring around at the various St. Mungo's staff members who were present.

"That would be me," volunteered a portly middle-aged Healer whom Minerva remembered from her convalescence at the magical hospital after her run-in with Umbridge's goons.

"And you didn't think it prudent to administer a Sleeping Draught? She's got two limbs to regrow for Merlin's sake!"

"We're running low Madam Pomfrey, and Septima - Professor Vector - refused to take any. Said we should save it for the students."

"Well then," mumbled Poppy, clearly taken aback.

The healer shrugged apologetically, and returned to dabbing an ointment onto an angry looking burn that ran across the chest of Ernie Macmillan who was sitting on the end of a bed with an open yellow dressing gown spilling onto the mattress around him.

Another scream rent the air, and Minerva began to hobble towards her injured colleague intending at the very least to offer some comfort and perhaps cast a silencing charm, but Poppy was once again much faster, and swept past her, her white apron billowing out at her sides.

"-need to be noble," she was saying as Minerva drew up along the other side of Septima's bed. She looked down intending to find the injured witch's hand so that she might grab it reassuringly, but instead found that there was no hand to find. Both of Septima Vector's arms were little more than bloody masses of bandages.

"Mi - nerva," she groaned, her eyes refocusing out of the middle distance and onto Minerva's face. A short shriek of pain followed, and her body convulsed violently.

"I'm here."

"Don't - let her." With a great effort, Processor Vector nodded her head in the direction of the matron, who was holding a very empty looking bottle up to the light and swirling it.

"Don't be foolish. You've been ripped limb from limb by a giant. A bloody giant! I hadn't gotten to the giants on my list yet, Minerva. Rest assured we aren't done with that conversation."

"You deserve to sleep," chided Minerva, ignoring Poppy's outburst and still trying to find an appropriate location to place a reassuring hand. She finally settled on her colleague's thigh, which she patted a few times gently. "And I need you better, Septima. Hogwarts has lost enough today. We don't need to lose our Arithmancy professor as well. Take the potion."

"If - if you tell - me - who-" Professor Vector broke off with a sudden gasp, and Minerva felt her body tense beneath her hand. She looked up at Poppy, who was pouring out a drachm of the Sleeping Draught.

"You haven't told her?"

"Generally speaking, we try to avoid upsetting the patients," confirmed Poppy, handing the correctly measured potion across the bed to Minerva. "And I won't be telling her this time." The matron withdrew her wand from a pocket at the front of her robes, and cast a silencing charm on the area around where Septima lay. "What you tell her is your business as Headmistress."

"I'm not the Headmistress," objected Minerva weakly, not even really believing herself, as Poppy withdrew beyond the boundary of the silencing charm. She turned back to Septima, who was looking up at her through pain glazed eyes. "We lost Sinistra, Hooch, Pince and - well, Snape, if you feel like including him." Minerva certainly didn't - not without properly interrogating Potter, anyway - and from the way Vector's eyes narrowed, it would seem she wouldn't be too quick to forgive either. Or perhaps she was just wincing in pain.

"Trelawney was blinded by some curse or another and Poppy isn't sure she'll be able to see again, though Sybil is putting on a brave face and claims that her inner eye can now see clearer than ever. Which-" Minerva caught herself before saying something she would immediately regret. No, she couldn't speak ill of Sybil Trelawney today.

"Stu - dents?" groaned Septima, as Minerva bent down and placed the flask of potion up to her lips. She hesitated for the briefest of moments, considering her reply. But she couldn't bring herself to answer. Poppy was right, of course. Better not to burden the injured further. She tipped the flask and watched with grim satisfaction as Professor Vector quickly drifted off into what Minerva sincerely hoped would be a dreamless sleep.

Once she was clear of the silencing charm, the matron, who has been waiting for Minerva to finish, lowered the charm. "Can't have one of those on an unattended patient," she explained at Minerva's questioning look. "Wouldn't be able to tell if their condition worsened."

"Of course," Minerva mumbled. "I - I couldn't tell her about the students." Poppy had looked as though she had been on the verge of setting off into the thick of the hospital wing once more, but stopped and turned to look her friend full in the face.

"Thirteen. Thirteen dead students." Minerva found herself flinching at Poppy's bluntness. "Do you know how many students we'd lost during my time here before today?"

"One, I suspect. Diggory, was it not?" Minerva thought back to that horrible night three years before, when Potter had returned with Cedric's corpse and a story about the rebirth of You-know-who that may have been more frightening still.

"Yes, poor boy. Nothing to be done in that case. But tonight - thirteen dead students." Poppy breathed in deeply, closed her eyes and shoved her hands into the pockets of her apron. It was a full ten seconds before she let the breath out slowly and reopened her eyes. "I keep asking myself 'what if?' What if I'd decided to treat Brocklehurst before Patil? Would she still be alive?" She shook her head tiredly and stared off toward the far end of the hospital wing.

Minerva wanted to say something, but as she opened her mouth, she realized that she couldn't. She had her own 'what if?' scorched permanently onto her conscience.

"What if we'd sent for help from St. Mungo's three minutes earlier? What if I'd turned left instead of right at the bottom of the stairs in the entrance hall? What if-"

"What if I had insisted that those who were of age evacuate?" interjected Minerva quietly. Almost immediately she regretted bringing it up - she hadn't come to the hospital wing to make things about her. Poppy shut her mouth and nodded slowly, her eyes not leaving her friend's face.

"I'm sure that was a difficult decision."

"At the time, it wasn't difficult at all, and that's what worries me. I was convinced that it was the right thing to do - that those who had fought all year to keep Hogwarts from turning into a nightmare-"

"It was already a nightmare! Death Eaters in charge of the bloody castle, Minerva!"

"I can't argue," sighed the head of Gryffindor sadly. "I know your feelings about how the year played out, Poppy. They mirror my own, to be sure. But as I was saying, it seemed that the students had earned the right to stay and fight if they wanted."

"I would have evacuated them." The matron's tone was more pensive than accusatory, but Minerva couldn't help but flinch at her words anyway.

"Knowing what I know now, so would I," she said, offering up the clearest admission of her regret that she yet had.

"No," hissed Poppy, suddenly angry. "You don't get to second guess yourself! You made the right decision."

"But you just said-"

"I said that _I_ would have evacuated them. And _I'd_ have doomed all of us to a hopeless future where You-know-who ruled over his perfect pure-blooded perdition. There's a reason why people look to you to lead them Minerva. You demand the best from people, and they respect that because they can tell that they're getting your best in return."

"So no, I wouldn't have made the decision you did, but as soon as you'd made it, I had no doubt that it was the right choice. And so I did everything that I could to protect our school, because I knew that you were out there leading the charge. Unlike You-know-who, by the way. He may have had followers, but he was never a leader. And I'm still doing all I can to help to this very moment, because despite what you may think, _you are the bloody Hogwarts headmistress!"_

"Hear, Hear!" a voice from behind Minerva took her by surprise, but she knew better now than to spin around quickly or her injured leg would flare up. Plus, she was quite flustered by Poppy's speech, and needed a moment to gather her thoughts about herself. The matron had no such requirements however.

"Thank you Mr. Macmillan, but I'm quite sure that bed rest does not include - whatever it is that you're doing." Minerva attempted to surreptitiously wipe her suddenly moist eyes on the sleeve of her robes, then turned slowly to find Ernie Macmillan striding towards her purposefully.

"Madam Pomfrey, I just want to shake Professor McGonagall's hand, and tell her thank you on behalf of the Hufflepuffs who stayed to fight," he explained. Poppy harrumphed loudly, but said nothing further. Ernie extended his hand as he approached his Transfiguration professor, and she grasped it as firmly as she could manage under the circumstances.

"Except it is _I_ who should be thanking _you_ , Mr. Macmillan. You and the rest of the students who put themselves in harm's way."

"An opportunity we only got because you saw fit to trust us. We appreciate that trust." Minerva let go of Ernie's hand, and pursed her lips, eager to have this conversation behind her. It was making her quite uncomfortable.

"You're welcome. Now get back into bed before you make poor Madam Pom-"

"Poppy! We need your help!" The voice, a man's, rang out from the farthest end of the hospital wing, where a set of curtains had been hung around an area a bit larger than a typical bed.

"I'll let you-" started Minerva, intending to leave Poppy to it, but she was startled by the matron grabbing her hand and pulling her down the rather indistinct central aisle between the jumble of beds.

"It's Ms. Brown. I'm afraid we've tried everything at this point. I want you to take a look, too. I know that healing magic isn't really your specialty, but at this point we're pretty desperate for any ideas at all."

"Poppy," groaned Minerva, through clenched teeth. "I'm happy to help, but you'll need to slow down. I'm afraid I can't keep up."

"Oh right, your leg." The matron dropped Minerva's hand then drew her wand once more. "Next time, don't try to hide it from me. It'll make everything much easier." With a swift swish and flick of Poppy's wand, the pain that had been coursing through Minerva's leg dulled considerably. "That's just for the pain, mind. We'll need to get a proper look at it some other time."

"So, Ms. Brown," prompted the girl's head of house, eager to steer the conversation away from her own issues, "I heard it was Greyback." The two friends were very nearly to the curtained off area now, and Minerva was gradually becoming aware of the frantic conversation taking place within it.

"So we're told," confirmed Poppy. "You remember all the trouble I had with Bill Weasley, yes?" Minerva nodded as details of another horrible night came flooding back. Albus. She found herself wondering briefly if _he_ would have allowed the students to stay and fight.

Well this is -" Poppy cut off as they arrived at the break in the curtains that would allow them entrance. "I suppose you'd be better off just seeing it. You've not got a weak stomach, have you?" Ignoring the question, Minerva pushed aside the curtains and ducked through the resulting gap.

The smell - acrid and solid - hit her first. More of a wall, really. Her breath caught in her throat as her body attempted to keep the spoiled air from entering her lungs. As it hung there trapped in her esophagus, she could feel bile rising to meet it from the other side. With a determined gulp, she fought against its rise, managing to keep everything inside that ought not be out.

Lavender Brown had not been so lucky. Recovering quickly from her initial nausea, Minerva turned her attention to the blood-stained bed in the middle of the curtained-off area. " _No_ ," she moaned softly. The girl was covered with a second bloody sheet from the waist down, but her upper half - what there was of it - was laid bare. There was no other word for it; Lavender had been eviscerated.

Deep sweeping slashes criss-crossed her abdomen, and from these, lengths of intestine - and other organs Minerva could not bring herself to identify - spilled out and were collected in various ceramic bowls that were placed haphazardly on the bed. She felt Poppy noiselessly glide through the curtain beside her and place a hand on her shoulder. But she couldn't tear her eyes away from the horrible sight in front of her. Sweet silly Lavender, not just a student, _her_ student. A Gryffindor to the last.

"You all right?" Poppy's voice beside her seemed a million miles away, and it took a moment for the sound to get interpreted as speech by Minerva's brain. Not trusting her ability to open her mouth without allowing something out, she nodded curtly, and moved to the side of the curtained area.

"Poppy, we want to wake her up." The speaker was the person who had cried for help not a minute earlier. He was a tall, thin, elderly wizard with a short grey beard and very little hair atop his head. He wore the lime green robes of a St. Mungo's healer, but they were covered in blood up to the elbow, and Minerva realized with a start that he'd had his hands _inside_ Lavender.

"Are you sure that's a good idea, Smethwyck?"

"No," he confessed, as Minerva attempted to place his name. "Not at all. We're in uncharted territory here, as I'm sure you're aware. But I _am_ sure that we can't keep on like this or we'll lose her by lunchtime."

"And it will only be momentary," added a second wizard in St. Mungo's robes. This healer was much younger than the first, and Minerva immediately recognized him as Augustus Pye, a very studious Ravenclaw she'd had the pleasure of teaching some years before. "We intend to give her a Draught of Living Death." Poppy looked taken aback for a moment, but then nodded in understanding.

"You're hoping that by slowing down her life functions you can buy some more time."

"Precisely," agreed Smethwyck, "and, with luck, she may stabilize to the point we can move her to St. Mungo's. No offense Poppy. She's only got a chance at all because of your quick action."

"Well then let's not let her down now by standing here and talking." Poppy drew her wand and bustled to the bedside, taking care not to disturb the bowls of entrails resting there. "What do you need me to do?"

"Just keep her calm," instructed Pye, measuring out a midnight black potion. It she gets excited, her heart rate will spike, and we may not be able to get blood replenishers in her fast enough. We figure she's less likely to panic if she sees someone she knows."

"Minerva may be better suited to the task at hand as her head of house." As she spoke, the matron beckoned her friend forward, and pointed to the top of the bed near Lavender's head. "Minerva McGonagall, this is Hippocrates Smethwyck and Augustus Pye. They're from the serious bites ward over at St. Mungo's."

"Gentlemen." Minerva inclined her head slightly at the introduction, and stationed herself level with Lavender's head. "This doesn't look like any bite that I've ever seen."

"It's not," confirmed Smethwyck, "These are claw marks from an untransformed werewolf. And I use the term 'claw' loosely here. But as Poppy learned with the Weasley case last year, there are definite complications that are particular to the assailant being a werewolf. And those are something of a specialty of mine."

"Are we ready? We should have more time to discuss particulars after we get this potion in her." Pye handed the Draught of Living Death to Minerva, who took it with both hands, hoping that their combined efforts would help mask the fact that she was shaking rather badly.

"I am," she answered. "Just get her to take this and keep her calm."

"You've got it. _Ennervate._ " Despite having said she was ready, Minerva was taken by surprise at the quickness with which the spell had been enacted. She leaned over Lavender's body as it began to stir, and positioned the potion better in her left hand so that it would be ready at a moment's notice.

"Grab her arm, Poppy," hissed Smethwyck from somewhere behind her, and she knew that the healers would be occupied trying to keep Lavender from doing more damage to herself.

"Ms. Brown, can you hear me? Lavender?" There was a fluttering of eyelids, and Minerva caught a blue flash as Lavender's eyes opened just a crack. I need you to keep your eyes on me Ms. Brown, do you understand?" Almost immediately, Lavender's eyes started to scan the room, trying to take in her surroundings.

"Pr-" she began, but with a sudden gasp of pain, she stopped trying to speak and her eyes shot open in fear. This was not going at all like it was supposed to.

"Ms. Brown, everything will be all right. You're safe in the hospital wing. Madam Pomfrey has already examined you and I have a potion here that she gave me. She wanted you to take it right away after you woke up."

"Did - did we - win?" The whispered question shocked Minerva. She had expected Lavender to ask what sort of injury she had, or maybe why she was being restrained. But no, here she was, at death's door, and she was proving why she'd been sorted into Gryffindor.

"Yes! You-know-who is dead." Minerva brought the flask of potion up to Lavender's lips, but didn't tip it yet. Lavender looked as if she wanted to say something else.

"Good." Minerva felt the corners of her mouth twitch upward at this.

"Indeed. Now drink up. You need to get better so you can join in all the parties." She tipped the flask slowly, starting a slow stream of the Draught into Lavender's mouth. Immediately after swallowing, the girl's entire body went limp and what very little colour she had left drained away entirely. Even the spark in her blue eyes extinguished, leaving dull glassy orbs that stared up at the ceiling.

"Is she -" gasped Minerva, too distraught at the sight of the girl's apparent death to even finish the question. She knew, intellectually, that this was the intended effect of the potion, but that had looked an awful lot like a real death, given the circumstances.

"She appears to still be alive," Smethwyck confirmed. "Well done Minerva."

"Her pulse is way down, and respiration appears unlabored, though obviously very infrequent," supplied Pye, jabbing his wand at various spots on Lavender's body. "Thank Merlin her lungs weren't punctured, or that would have been the end of it."

"So what is it exactly that's wrong with her?" asked Minerva as she backed shakily away from Lavender's bed and handed the flask with the remaining Draught of Living Death to Poppy. "Beyond the obvious, I mean," she added with a feeble wave in the direction of the dreadful gashes across the girl's abdomen. "And bear in mind that I'm not particularly well versed on anatomy - internal anatomy, anyway."

Smethwyck pointed at one of the ceramic bowls holding what Minerva believed to be intestines. "Most pressing is that this bowl needs to connect to that bowl over there." He pointed to a second bowl on Lavender's other side.

"And I take it a simple _reparo_ is out of the question?"

"Tried it, Professor McGonagall," said Pye gently. "Not the first thing we tried, obviously, but - we were getting a bit desperate by that point."

"We still are desperate," added Poppy as she drew up next to Minerva. "the issue is that these wounds don't heal, just like Bill Weasley's. Any sort of magic that would typically be used to join up the two ends has no effect whatsoever."

"What if -" Minerva broke off as the half-formed idea in her head struggled to find a voice. "You say the current ends can't be joined up because of some effect of Lycanthropy. But need you use the current ends? Couldn't you - well - cut off the affected bits and then attempt to rejoin the clean wounds?"

"Oh, I like her _very_ much," said Smethwyck, nodding in appreciation. That is a fantastic idea if I do say so myself. But," he shrugged apologetically, "I tried it, and it didn't work. Whatever is causing the issue was just transferred to the new ends, and poor Ms. Brown was left with two feet less of intestine."

"I'm in favor of stitching the two ends together Muggle-style," supplied Pye. "It - doesn't have the greatest track record of success-"

"It's had _no_ success, unless there's a case I'm forgetting." Smethwyck frowned at the younger Healer, and then turned to Minerva. "Still, that's a better option than any of the others we've got at the moment."

"Which are?"

"Whatever you come up with next, so no pressure."

"But I'm just a Transfiguration professor!" But even as she said it, another crazy idea was taking shape.

"Don't sell yourself short, Minerva. I highly doubt you've ever _just_ been anything."

"Shush, Poppy," she ordered, pursing her lips and offering an apologetic wave in the matron's direction. "You'll derail my train of thought." The curtained space was quiet for several long moments as Minerva concentrated on the task at hand. Tried her best to disassociate the dead-looking body on the bloody bed from the knowledge that one of her students was dying.

"No, we're not getting to fourteen," she mumbled, and she withdrew her wand smoothly. "I'd like to transfigure her intestines into something else," she announced to the room at large.

"Did you have something specific in mind?" asked Smethwyck, stroking his beard.

"I was thinking a chain. Then, we could physically link the two lengths of chain together, and untransfigure the whole thing back into her intestines. At which point, with luck, they'll remain connected." Minerva watched as the two healers looked at one another and held a very fast silent conversation using mostly their eyes and hands.

"I think, seeing as you're you, this has a chance of working," said Smethwyck after he seemed to win over Pye. "But - and I don't mean to question your abilities here - would you mind practicing your spell on the bits of intestine we chopped off when attempting our earlier fixes?"

"I would welcome the opportunity to practice. I've never done anything quite like it before."

"I'm sure," said Pye softly as he grabbed a small bowl that was sitting somewhat apart from the others and carried it around the bed to where Minerva stood. "It seems certain that no one has done anything remotely like this before." He held the bowl at waist height in front of her, and she peered in at the two short lengths of intestine held within.

 _Right, time to think this through. Intestines to chains. Theoretically it shouldn't be too difficult, since they're similarly shaped. Still, it would be prudent to tailor the incantation to this particular transfiguration, rather than leave it to chance. The Latin for chain is catena, no?_

"Can I confirm that 'catena' is Latin for chain?" she asked Pye, who was looking at her intently as she mentally worked her way through the prep work for the spell.

"That sounds right, yes."

 _So catenafors then. The wand movement - duplicate the intended shape - I'll describe two small circles and then a slash along the length of the intestine. Does the metal matter? Something unharmful, to be sure. Silver would be easiest, but that might -_

"Smethwyck, would the chains being silver cause some sort of adverse reaction due to the werewolf contamination?"

"Well now, that's a fascinating question." The older healer looked up from a close examination he was performing of the ragged edges of the gouges on Lavender's abdomen. "It's a definite possibility. In fact, you might be better off avoiding all of the moon metals." He bent low over Lavender's body once more and silently pointed something out to Poppy who was standing on the opposite side of the bed from him.

 _So no silver, quicksilver or selenium. Lead is right out. Gold or copper then. If I'm remembering correctly, copper's magical properties include promoting positive relationships. That sounds promising, and the color is closer, which should be slightly less challenging._

"Copper then?"

"Copper," agreed Smethwyck with a nod, not looking up.

 _Must be precise._

And she was. When it came to spellwork, she was always precise. Two quick " _catenafors,"_ and the bowl Pye was holding contained two short lengths of copper chain. They rattled gently against the bowl and each other as Pye set the bowl down on the bed. He gently picked up one of the chains and pried open the last link with his fingers. He then looped the open chain link into the last link of the other length of chain, and then closed the open link before setting the now longer chain back in the bowl.

" _Integro ileum,"_ incanted Minerva, sweeping her wand along the chain's length. A moment later, Pye was holding up a single stretch of intestine that dangled from his fingers. He poked and prodded at it, describing it to Smethwyck as he did so.

"It's fully reconstituted, though there is some scarring present on both the serosa and mucosa. Moderate to severe bruising at the location of the manual manipulation of the last link."

"I'm quite sure Lavender here won't object to a bruised jejunum if you can replicate that success, Minerva. That's some very impressive wandwork."

"Thank you, Hippocrates. Do I have your approval to attempt this on Ms. Brown?"

"By all means!" he exclaimed, grinning excitedly. Less than a minute later, all four of them were looking down at one continuous length of intestine as it lay draped over the wound on Lavender's stomach.

"Oh well done," cried Poppy, her hands clasped in front of her. Minerva allowed herself a wan smile.

"That was a big obstacle to get past," said Smethwyck, reaching out to finger the new joint in Lavender's intestines. "Just the first of many, mind, but I'd say her chances of making it are a good bit better now than they were a minute ago." He withdrew his hand, then turned towards Poppy, holding both of his bloody hands up before her. "Would you, Poppy?"

The matron withdrew her wand from her apron and scrubbed the healer's hands clean with a quick " _tergeo._ "

"Thanks. And thanks to you as well, Minerva." He extended his right hand, and Minerva reciprocated, shaking firmly. "And not just for this. Thanks for our future. I've heard some tales from the survivors that strain believability, but by all accounts, you led the good guys with considerable aplomb." He grinned at her jauntily, and she felt her own thin smile falter.

"I - thank you." Her first instinct had been to object, but that would just extend the conversation further, and as always she was made supremely uncomfortable by the praise she felt to be excessive. She had played her part the best she could. No more and no less. She relaxed her grip on Hippocrates' hand and made to withdraw, but instead felt the healer's grip tighten slightly.

"I'll keep you apprised of Ms. Brown's condition personally." He gave her hand one final shake, then finally let it go.

 _Is he - Is he flirting with me? Now? Here? With a nearly dead teenager lying in her own blood right next to us?_

"That would be nice. I look forward to good news."

 _Merlin! Am I flirting back?_

And suddenly, she had to be elsewhere. Anywhere else. No, not _anywhere_ else. She needed Albus. He'd set her straight. Or at the very least _he_ wouldn't try to flirt with her.

"Pye, you prepare Ms. Brown for transport, and I'll head back to St. Mungo's to inform them of her imminent arrival. Poppy, it was a pleasure, no matter what everyone else says about you." The matron turned to her friend as Hippocrates Smethwyck ducked out of the curtained area.

"What's he on about? Who's been saying things about me?" she demanded.

"No one in particular, I'm sure. I was cornered by a representative of St. Mungo's who wanted me to come and ask you to take a break because you were getting a bit possessive of the patients. But having seen the situation with my own eyes, you have my full support. You keep my students safe Poppy, and I'll deal with anyone from St. Mungo's that can't deal with a highly competent - if somewhat brusque - matron."

"Brusque? They think I'm brusque? I'll show them brusque." She huffed indignantly, then stormed from the makeshift room. Minerva briefly worried that the next mediwitch to make a treatment error might wind up in need of treatment herself, but decided that were Poppy to go that route, she'd likely have been justified.

"Pye, it was nice to see you again. Please stay sane and take good care of Ms. Brown here."

"Professor," the young healer acknowledged, inclining his head slightly.

"And you," Minerva added loudly, rounding to face the bed where Lavender lay as though dead, "you keep fighting, do you hear? You're a Gryffindor dammit. You're not allowed to give up now."


	3. Minister for Magic

**Disclaimer:** I am not, nor have I ever been J.K. Rowling. I have, however, appropriated the Ministry of Magic level descriptions in the lift from OotP. I do hope she doesn't sue me. I'm poor.

* * *

 **Chapter Three**

 **Minister for Magic**

* * *

One roll of parchment.

He stared down at it in disbelief, then back up at the wizard who had brought it in. In through the gigantic and ornate door to the gigantic and ornate office that he really hadn't wanted. The wizard, apparently one of his aides, whose name he'd quite forgotten -

"Forgive me," he said slowly, startling the man before him, "I seem to have forgotten your name."

"It's - it's Collins, Sir. Ambrose Collins, Mr. Shacklebolt - Sir." He fidgeted uncomfortably, in the manner of someone who found himself somewhere he didn't belong. He glanced nervously over his shoulder towards the door.

"Yes, it is a most impressive door, Collins. I've spent a fair few minutes this morning attempting to figure out if it's meant to keep people out or keep me in."

"Sir?"

"But then, Collins, I came to realize that it doesn't bloody matter which is it's intended purpose, because they are the same thing. It isolates, Collins. Separates. Divides. Anyone finding themselves on one side of that door will invariably feel that they are on the wrong side of it."

"Are - are you on the wrong side of it?" Kingsley watched as his aide's face coloured, then started chuckling when he hurriedly added a "Sir - sorry, Sir!"

"Collins," that was the fourth time he'd said the name - one more and he should have it permanently associated with the rakish sandy blonde wizard that now stood before him, "that was rather bold of you."

"I'm sorry, Sir, I-"

"What were you doing yesterday at this time, Collins?" There. That was five.

"Yesterday? Sir?" Ambrose had been edging towards the door about as subtly as a Niffler going after a Galleon, but he stopped now and appeared to consider the question. "I would have been making coffee down in the Auror offices, I suppose. Or else duplicating some inter-office memo or another."

"You're one of Robards' then?" That would actually make a lot of sense, and ease some of the fears Kingsley had had about the members of his staff.

"I'm not - not an Auror or anything like that, just a secretary, really. Sir. And I - haven't been on Level two all that long."

"Do you know where _I_ was yesterday at this time?" Kingsley waited for Collins to hazard a guess, but when it seemed none would be forthcoming, he pushed ahead. "No? I was in hiding. On the run from the wizards controlling the man in this very office. He was sitting in this same chair, attempting to put into place a plan to capture me - kill me, like as not. But today he's dead, and here I sit." There was a silence of several seconds while Kingsley and Collins stared at each other. "Ask me again."

"Sir?"

"Ask me if I'm on the wrong side of the door, Collins."

"Are you on the wrong side of the door?"

"No." Ambrose narrowed his eyes and looked puzzled.

"I'd have sworn you were going to say 'yes,' Sir."

"So did I," agreed Kingsley with a sigh, "but the last three people on this side of the door _definitely_ didn't belong here. I will not be the fourth, which means that, for now, I'm where I belong."

"From where I'm standing Sir, there's already a marked improvement."

"That's probably just the lighting." Kingsley was gratified to see a smile crack on Collins's face. "It would seem that our friends in Magical Maintenance have decided that it was finally time for the sun to come out." Kingsley spun his chair - a comfortable high-backed leather affair - around so that he could look out the enchanted windows that filled the wall behind him. It was a gorgeous spring day out in the nowhere. "I hear that the past several months were rather bleak, weather-wise."

"Like a pea soup, most days, Sir. London fog, as it were."

"That was rather brave of them," mused Kingsley, watching as a gentle breeze that wasn't there riffled through the young leaves of an oak tree that wasn't there. "Didn't the Death Eaters realize the implication?"

"I'd always just assumed it was the Death Eaters idea, Sir." Kingsley swivelled back around to face Ambrose, who was shrugging half-heartedly. "Keep everyone miserable and afraid to put a toe out of line. Psychological warfare of a sort."

"And just what would a secretary know about psychological warfare?" asked the temporary Minister, cocking an eyebrow.

"About as much as a rogue Auror would know about running the government, I expect." Ambrose's hand flew up to his mouth, and he stammered through another apology while Kingsley's baritone laughter echoed around the room. It felt good to laugh.

"I'll tell you what, Collins. I like you, and I need someone who can talk to me like that. You may not have been doing it on purpose, but your lack of a filter is - in here at least - definitely a positive." Ambrose nodded quickly, though he kept his lips pursed together as though preventing anything further from blurting out.

"Out there," Kingsley waved a hand around lazily, indicating everywhere else, "you'll need to be able to hold your tongue better if you're to continue being my assistant, do you understand?"

"But sir, I'm not your assistant, I'm just - Oh!" Ambrose's entire body seemed to jump slightly as he realized just what Kingsley had been insinuating. "Yes sir, of course. Thank you."

"Your first job, Collins, is to figure out who is responsible for working up this daily situation report." Kingsley indicated the single scroll of parchment on his desk. He picked it up, unrolled it, and held it up for his assistant's inspection. "Thirteen inches. My wand is thirteen inches, Collins. I want my reports to be longer than my bloody wand. Tell me; does it seem like only thirteen inches worth of events have happened in the last day?"

"No, sir, I'd expect there might be a few more inches worth of information that could be squeezed from it, Sir."

"Then see that it does. I expect the person who's responsible is used to generating these reports for an Imperiused puppet. I am not an Imperiused puppet."

"I'll be certain to mention that to him or her, Sir. Will you be needing anything further?"

Kingsley found himself chuckling again as he dismissed Collins, but his good mood died as he smoothed out the parchment on his desk to read it. Thirteen inches. The Ministry was in chaotic upheaval, Gringotts had suffered its first successful robbery, Hogwarts lay in ruins, Death Eaters were scattering like so many leaves in the wind, and the most dangerous dark wizard - perhaps ever - had been defeated largely by a group of teenagers.

And he had one bloody roll of parchment. Thirteen inches. How in Merlin's name was he supposed to do his job if he had no idea what was going on?

There was nothing for it, he was going to have to do his own situation report. He was going to have to take back the Ministry one level at a time.

* * *

"Level two, Department of Magical Law Enforcement, including the Improper Use of Magic Office, Auror Headquarters, and Wizengamot Administration Services."

The bored disembodied voice echoed around the otherwise empty lift that Kingsley had grabbed to hop down a floor. Taking back Level one of the Ministry had proven rather anticlimactic. He'd been practically the only one there.

It made sense, of course. Anyone who had served that close to the top in the previous administration was likely to be either a Death Eater or someone sympathetic to their cause. And even if they weren't, the supposition that he himself had just made would make any of the innocent wary of coming into work for fear of being wrongly accused.

So he had removed nameplates from doors as he trod along the purple carpeted corridor and stuffed them in one of the pockets of his robes. He'd ask Robards to work his way through the pile of them - well, perhaps not Dolores Umbridge's - no. Yes. Yes, Umbridge's too. If he was going to do this - and it certainly seemed he had little choice at the moment - he needed to go about it as impartially as possible. Making snap judgements about people was what had gotten the last three administrations in trouble.

He had, however, vanished the vast majority of the Muggle-born Registration Commission's presence up there, including every last bit of propaganda - every pamphlet, flyer and poster.

But now here he was on Level two, and already things were getting more interesting. As he stepped off the lift, he found himself on the edge of a duel. A rather inartful one to be sure, but a real honest to Merlin wizard duel.

That Improper Use of Magic witch - what was her name? It reminded him of jumping - Skip-something- no, Hop- Hopkirk, that was it - was about ten paces from the lift with her back to him, and she was shooting off shield charms that were having marginal success at deflecting basic incoming jinxes that were being cast by a petite elderly grey-haired witch who Kingsley recognized but couldn't name. He really was terrible with names.

" _Expelliarmus_ ," he said lazily, after summoning his wand into his hand from its holster on his forearm. The wands of both witches soared through the air toward him, and he caught them stiffly. He was still a little sore from the morning's battles.

"What gives you the-" shouted the elderly witch before she was stopped cold at the sight of Kingsley's large frame in the lift gate. "Kingsley! I mean - Shacklebolt! No, sorry, Minister!" The witch stooped over and placed one hand on a knee as she panted for breath.

"Correct on all three counts, I'm afraid. Might I ask why the two of you were duelling just outside the doorway to the Law Enforcement offices?"

Hopkirk had turned around to follow the path of her wand after it had flown from her hand, but now she glanced angrily over her shoulder at the elderly witch who was no longer bent double, but instead leaning heavily against the wall of the corridor. "That one back there decides to take the law into her own hands and comes marching into my office to-"

"She was a - supporter of - of You-Know-Who!" interjected the would be vigilante breathlessly.

"That's a load of complete tosh!" shouted Hopkirk, colour and fury rising in her. Kingsley held up his wand hand to stop them before the argument got even more out of hand, but neither of them noticed.

"You fed Muggle-born Trace information to Snatchers when-"

"That's completely ridiculous!"

"You were in cahoots with Umbridge and the Commission! You were seen!"

"That wasn't even me! I'd been attacked and left nearly naked in an alley! I was a victim for Merlin's sake!"

"Enough!" shouted Kingsley, trying on his Minister for Magic voice for the first time. To his surprise, he quite liked it. Not as surprising, the two witches immediately stopped their quarrelling and looked at him. "This is not an appropriate way for employees of the Ministry of Magic to be behaving."

"Sorry, Minister," grumbled Hopkirk, bowing her head.

"But she-" the elderly witch started to protest, but she was cut off quickly when Kingsley sent red sparks flying toward the ceiling.

"Did you report your concerns to the Department of Magical Law Enforcement?" he asked, making a conscious effort to keep his tone even. The elderly witch didn't speak, but shook her head reluctantly. "I can understand why you haven't. With Yaxley as the department head, you'd only have been drawing attention to yourself. Your confidence in the system is shaken right now, and rightfully so."

"For the past nine months, all of us have been preoccupied with our own safety - the safety of our loved ones and our families. We'd go to bed each evening hoping that, come morning, everyone was still where they were when we kissed them goodnight. That constant state of fear changes a person. We begin to do things we otherwise wouldn't - things we'd have been ashamed of if times were different."

"Don't get me wrong. I don't necessarily mean we were all running around casting Unforgivable Curses. That we were passing information to Death Eaters. That we were collecting rewards for turning over our Muggle-born friends and neighbours. But little things: telling a lie to a friend, being wary of a person we used to trust, being relieved when we heard about someone else's misfortunes - relieved that the misfortunes weren't ours."

"But we could justify it to ourselves because it worked. It kept us safe - if not necessarily whole. We did what we had to, nothing more and nothing less. And we looked at our friends - our neighbours - even our family - and we started to wonder. If we were willing to do _these_ things to protect ourselves, what might _they_ bedoing?"

"That wondering turned to suspicion - turned to fear. And that fear fed our enemies and made them stronger. Bolder. No longer did they operate in the shadows, or at the periphery of our perception. They operated in broad daylight - became brazen and unrepentant. Turned us against ourselves. Played up the paranoia. They thought they had won. Worse, many of us thought so too."

"But though the darkness sometimes seemed poised to swallow our very way of life, there were those who never lost hope. Those who believed that if they just kept fighting - inching forward towards a future that seemed just out of reach - they could prevail. That they _would_ prevail."

"They _did_ prevail. The monumental - heroic - efforts of Harry Potter and his companions, the bravery and loyalty of a young generation that came of age knowing nothing but war, and the sacrifices of countless others, have given us - all of us - a new opportunity. One that we can not waste by continuing to feed the suspicions and paranoia that drove us apart."

"We are one. One nation, one people, one- one-" Kingsley fell silent, struggling to come up with an additional item for his list, but it was too late. All of the momentum he'd worked up during his speech was draining out of him quickly. He shook his head slightly to clear it, and as he did so, he noticed the two wands he held in his left hand.

"Sorry about that," he said after remembering where he was and what had been happening. "It seems I got a bit carried away there." Both Hopkirk and the elderly witch had moved closer while he had - well, he had pontificated, he supposed - and now stood very near to each other just a few paces away.

"That was a rather impressive speech, Sir," said Hopkirk, quietly. "Perhaps a bit excessive for an audience of two, but impressive, to be sure."

"I've been thinking about what I'm going to say during my radio address this afternoon," Kingsley admitted. "Might have slipped into speech mode there for a minute. Again, I apologize." He held out the two wands he'd captured from them, and beckoned them forward to take them. "You aren't going to be duelling in the corridors of the Ministry again, are you?"

"No, Sir," both of them replied, though he thought he could hear a note of resentment in the elderly witch's voice. She hurriedly grabbed her wand and scooted past the Minister, coming to a standstill in front of the golden grilles of the lift.

"I'm not saying that you shouldn't report your suspicions," Kingsley explained to her back, "just that once you do, that needs to be the end of it. I'm relatively sure that just about every employee of the Ministry will wind up having a complaint lodged against them. If there is merit to any accusations, then there will be trials. If not, then don't hold a grudge. Let the Law Enforcement division do their job, don't make it your own.

The witch said nothing, but tapped her foot impatiently as she waited on the lift's arrival. Kingsley sighed deeply. Apparently one speech delivered in a nigh empty corridor of the Ministry wasn't going to be enough to fix the entire wizarding world. "Hopkirk, could I have a quick word with you?" he asked, after the lift had finally come and removed the elderly witch.

"With me, Minister? Sure, I suppose." She motioned towards the Improper Use of Magic Office, but he waved her off.

"No, I'm afraid I don't have time for a proper meeting. I'm on something of a mission at the moment, and if all my stops wind up being as - as adventurous as this one, I may be giving my speech rather later than I'm scheduled to. I'll be brief. Would it be fair to say that you know more about the workings of the Trace than most other Ministry employees?"

"Well, yes," allowed Hopkirk warily, "but you do know that everything Azulia there was saying is a lie, right?"

"I suspected as much when you weren't fighting back, yes." Hopkirk's body visibly relaxed, and Kingsley smiled warmly at her. "We're all on edge right now, that's all. And it's going to take a good while to sort everything out.

"I'll say, It's a mess. We've had dozens of reports of under-age magic and hundreds of celebrations taking place in full view of Muggles as we speak. It's - it's chaos."

"I'm sure. Who is in charge of your office's response?"

"I - I don't think we really have a Head at the moment. We're just muddling through best we can."

"Then I'm authorizing you to coordinate your response with the other Ministry offices as the emergency Head of the Improper Use of Magic Office. We'll see about getting you confirmed more permanently in a couple of weeks."

"Thank you Minister, that should help a bit."

"Good. But what I'm really interested in is the Taboo. Does it work like the Trace?" Hopkirk's eyes widened slightly at the question, and fiddled with her wand, weaving it intricately through her fingers. Kingsley watched it spin, impressed.

"My understanding is that they're quite similar, yes," she said cautiously. "They are both full time monitoring charms, they just monitor for different things. In a lot of ways the Taboo is actually simpler. There aren't as many variables in play."

"So how do we go about ending it? The Taboo, that is. I'd rather like to say You-Know-Who's name in my speech later."

"Well, the Trace is rather tamper-proof, as I'm sure you're aware. The only way to cancel it is to age out of it, or, I suppose, if the caster cancelled it on his own or - or died."

"Who might that be?" Hopkirk glanced around nervously, as through ensuring the two of them were alone. She stopped twirling her wand and looked back at Kingsley in silence for a long moment before answering quietly.

"It's a what, actually. The Sorting Hat. But you didn't hear that from me. Supposed to be a big secret."

"Then I'll tell no one," the Minister assured her. "So you're telling me that in order to lift the Taboo we need to find the person who cast it, then either convince them to undo it, or kill them." He was beginning to think he wouldn't be saying Voldemort's name any time soon.

"Well, yes, though that's just speculation based on how the Trace works."

"It's more to go on than I had a few minutes ago. Thank you. I'll let you get back to work. If there's anything I can do to help with - well, anything - please let me know." They shook hands amiably, and Kingsley watched as she slipped through the door back into the office she was now in charge of.

While he'd told her that he believed she hadn't been complicit in handing information over to the Snatchers - truly _wanted_ to believe it - he felt his own suspicions creeping up on him. He shook his head sadly. At some point soon he was going to have to come to terms with the fact that he wasn't an Auror any more, and that he was allowed to trust people again. He was going to have to follow his own speech's advice.

His feet beat the familiar path to the heavy double oak doors of the Auror Offices. His home away from home for the past - goodness, was it twenty years now? He paused outside the doors and listened for a minute, attempting to gauge the situation he'd be walking into. On a normal day laughter and snippets of jocular conversation could be heard from as far away as the lifts, but today there was practically silence.

He took a deep breath and pushed open the left hand door - as was traditional for an Auror returning from a mission - and passed into the offices unsure of what to expect. The cubicles that filled the centre of the bullpen were mostly deserted, not only of people, but also of a large majority of the personal effects of the Auror's that used to occupy them. Blank walls and bare desks dominated the space.

Against his will, his eyes flicked towards the cubicle that Tonks had been using the last time he'd been in these offices months ago. At the time it had been as bright and colourful as she was, filled with scraps of yarn and fabric as she had filled her copious free time - Robards wouldn't let her do much - with attempts at making clothes and blankets for the bump that was just beginning to show. The memory turned cold, even as she laughed, because his eyes now saw that that cubicle, too, was nothing but a sterile blank space. As devoid of life as she had been that morning, laid out on the cold stone floor of the Great Hall.

"Sir, Mr. Robards is waiting for you in his office." A middle-aged witch with a severe bun and a stack of parchments under an arm had come jogging up to him as he had stood reminiscing.

"Thank you-" Kingsley broke off, trying to remember Robards' secretary's name. She smiled slightly and nodded encouragingly. "Florence?"

"Goodness, they give you a fancy new job, and _now_ you start remembering the little people?" she teased, her smile widening. "Could you give these to Robards for me?" She handed the stack of parchment to Kingsley. "Latest tips on suspected Death Eater movement. I need to get back to the Owl Arrival Point. They're coming in thick and fast." Kingsley confirmed that he'd do as she asked, then watched as she hurried through the double doors on the opposite side of the bullpen.

He found the very bald Gawain Robards in his office with his back to the door, contemplating a giant map of the British Isles. Groups of little pins of various colours were stuck in the map, with each colour forming a trail that seemingly spiralled outward from Scotland before becoming more and more nebulous as it got longer. As Kingsley stood in the doorway watching, Robards used his wand to draw a glowing purple boundary line around a group of orange pins that formed a terminus of that colour's trail, and were centred in the south west of Ireland.

"Well hello there, Selwyn," he said in a low whisper, grabbing a slip of parchment and a quill off of his desk. He scribbled something on the parchment, then used his wand to light it on fire. It burned quickly, and he tossed it in the air just before the flames reached his fingers. He then turned back to the map and ignored the falling scrap that burnt itself into nothingness before reaching waist height.

Kingsley cleared his throat and knocked on the door frame. "I've been told you were expecting me." Robards spun around and levelled his wand at Kingsley's chest in one rapid and fluid movement that stood in stark contrast to his rather frail appearance. Kingsley's breath caught in his throat before he realized that Robards was grinning.

"If I were to walk into the Banshee's Teat Tavern at eleven in the evening and order the usual, what would arrive at my table?" he demanded, even as he was rounding the desk and rapidly crossing the carpeted space between desk and door.

"Nice try old man. We both know that you can't walk into the Banshee's Teat; it has no door." Robards lowered his wand with a laugh, and the two embraced warmly.

"Forgive me, but I had to check," said Robards after they'd separated. "The Kingsley Shacklebolt I knew wouldn't have wanted to come within an arm's length of the Minister job. And the man had some freakishly long arms."

"They must have seemed so to you, what with being a dwarf and all. And I'm not entirely sure how I wound up as Minister. I do know that I didn't volunteer."

"No? Hmm." Robards didn't look even slightly surprised, despite his feigning so. "Perhaps we should hold a recount of the Wizengamot's ballot."

"Well that depends. Who came in second?"

"Some relatively unknown wizard. Goes by Harry Potter or some such." The laughter that bubbled up from Kingsley's gut burst out silently at first, but built in volume until the room fairly reverberated with it.

"I think it best if I keep the job then. That poor boy's been through more than enough torture already." Robards nodded solemnly, and held out his wandless hand towards Kingsley expectantly. It took the Minister a moment to remember the parchments he held under his arm. "From Florence," he informed his old boss as he handed them over. Then, remembering the name plates from Level one in his pocket, he dug them out as well. "And from me."

"She's the only one here right now. We'd have a few more hands to help out if I hadn't sent Collins and McPherson upstairs to you, but I figured you could use some manpower of your own." The Head of the Auror Office turned and walked back to the giant map behind his desk - upon which he placed the name plates - then started reading the first sheet of parchment.

"Yes, thanks for that. I've made Collins my assistant, but you can have McPherson back if it'll help." Kingsley assumed the person in question was the portly wizard sitting at the desk outside the door to his office. He had done little more than nod to the man after leaving his office on his current 'mission.'

"Every little bit would help. I'm having trouble keeping up with all the tips rolling in." As he spoke, he used his wand to silently levitate two green pins into position a few inches from where the last green pins had been entered. "But even more than that, I need more Aurors. I've got four." Kingsley blinked, stupidly.

"Sorry, I thought I just heard you say that you have four Aurors available."

"Didn't you notice how empty it was out in the bullpen? Nine months of us getting picked off in Death Eater set-ups, and then I lost another five last night at Hogwarts. Only two of which were fighting for the good guys, might I add."

"There were Aurors fighting with the Death Eaters?" asked Kingsley, incredulous.

"Aurors in name only. I had a bunch of decidedly questionable recruits foisted on me by Yaxley." He pointed out the yellow set of pins on the map with his wand and they began to glow softly. "That's one of them there. Looks like he's holed up in Portsmouth, but I've got no one available to attempt an operation."

Kingsley was very nearly at the point of volunteering, had, in fact, opened his mouth. But the longer it hung open without him speaking, the more he realized that his days as an Auror were over. He was needed elsewhere right now.

The Wizengamot had seen fit to appoint _him_ as temporary Minister, and as such, they had to see something in him that inspired their confidence. Something that indicated that it was _he_ who should lead the rebuilding efforts. So that was what he would do.

"So how do we rebuild the corps?" he finally asked, fully embracing his new role. Robards continued to flip through the stack of new leads on Death Easter movements, and occasionally he'd add additional pins to the board and tap his chin reflectively. Kingsley waited and didn't press for an answer.

"There's a few Patrolmen next door that I think could make the jump," he said thoughtfully, after having worked completely through the stack. "Good hard workers that seem a bit bored with the standard fare. You know the type. Might have to waive an entrance requirement or two."

"If you're willing to go that route, why not open up recruitment to the kids who fought this morning up at Hogwarts? They won't have all their N.E.W.T.s, but-"

"You mean Potter." It wasn't a question.

"Well, yes. Among others," allowed Kingsley, somewhat confused by the terse response. "I've seen a bunch of them in action, Robards. Dumbledore's Army they call themselves."

"An army." Robards sighed heavily, pulled out his chair from under the desk and slumped down into it heavily. "I need the help, Shack. Desperately."

"But?" prompted Kingsley, sensing the unstated objection. "And that's Minister Shack to you now, Bard," he added, trying to lighten the mood a bit. He honestly didn't care what Robards called him. The man had saved his life countless times. That sort of thing happens when Aurors work as partners for nearly a dozen years.

"But - _Sir,"_ the word seemed to leave Robards' tongue only reluctantly, and the two old friends grinned briefly at each other before turning serious once more. "An army with its own leaders. With its own practices and procedures. An army that has tasted success and will think that they're invincible."

"I don't - _invincible_? I can assure you that this morning they are feeling anything but."

"Sorry. Poor word choice, I'll grant you. But there will be over-confidence, and they'll continue to look to Potter as their leader. It will be a rough transition."

"I'm hearing a lot of words that aren't 'no.'" Robards spun himself in his chair hard, and he made three full revolutions before he stopped his momentum by slapping his hands down hard on his desk.

"Make the offer. I'll trust your judgement."

* * *

"Level three, Department of Magical Accidents and Catastrophes, including the Accidental Magic Reversal Squad, Obliviator Headquarters, and Muggle-Worthy Excuse Committee," droned the voice, as Kingsley pushed on. As the grilles of the elevator lifted, he was greeted by an entire flock of inter-departmental memos of various colours rushing into the lift. A pair of harried looking Obliviators also stepped past him as he exited, and he caught a snatch of their conversation.

"-shift of thirty-seven hours. At the moment I don't give a hippogriff's bollock if You-Know-Who's dead. I just want some bloody sleep."

"That dragon was bad enough, but now with the celebrations-" the conversation tailed away as the lift dropped out of sight, and Kingsley smiled to himself. At least the Obliviators were operating normally, if at full capacity for the next day or two. That was something going his way at least.

The main offices of the Department of Magical Accidents and Catastrophes were housed in a very large open area similar to the Auror Office's bullpen above them, but it was housed behind a glass partition on the left side of the corridor that the Minister found himself in upon departing the lift. As he strode down the corridor towards the glass doors that would allow him in, he was able to see that, in stark contrast to the Auror offices upstairs, this level was a hubbub of activity.

But not only could Kingsley see in through the glass, the numerous witches and wizards who were holding huddled conversations within began to take notice of him as he approached the doors. By the time he had opened one and entered the room, all conversations had stopped except one, and nearly every pair of eyes was watching him.

"-know what the bloody hell's taking the Floo Network so long to get-" The final conversation died, as the young bespectacled wizard who was speaking drew to an abrupt halt when the witch he was addressing turned around to look for the reason it had gone so quiet.

Everybody stared at Kingsley, and he began to feel rather silly standing in the doorway uncomfortably. Would it be this way as long as he had the job? Was he doomed to silence every room he entered just because of his new title? He had an itch to break out into his speech one more time just to break the silence. He did still need to come up with a compelling end after all.

"You-Know-Who is dead." He had intended to continue, but the roar that greeted him had nearly staggered him, palpably solid as it was. There couldn't be more than forty people in the room, but the amount of noise they made seemed magnified somehow. Maybe because, though he'd been part of a cheering crowd before, he'd never been the focus of one, with all the noise funnelled directly towards him. Was this what Quidditch players felt like? He could certainly get used to it, this vibration in his chest floating at a point just above his sternum.

He let the cheer continue for a few more seconds, revelling in the feel of it washing over him, then held up both his hands for silence. It was granted quickly. "You- Know-Who is dead, but -" He had to hold a hand up again to prevent a second round of cheers that threatened to overpower him. "But, the work is just beginning. I want to thank all of you for being here right now. I know that there has to be somewhere else you'd rather be - celebrating, reuniting with loved ones, sleeping." There were whistles and laughter at this last suggestion, and Kingsley let them die slowly before he continued.

"I'm new at this, as you know. Currently, every person in this room is better at their jobs than I am at mine." He grinned at the half-hearted protests offered up by a few in the crowd, but waved them down. "But I vow to be here working right alongside all of you to rebuild our society into one that works for all of us - _all of us_ \- as hard as we work for it." Once more, the cheers built upon themselves into something alive, and Kingsley realized that the vibration he was feeling was it's heartbeat.

"All right," he called after a moment. "All right, that's enough. We've got work to do." As everyone watched, he began circulating amongst the groups, introducing himself to everyone, and forgetting nearly every name he was given in return. Thankfully, no one seemed offended or questioned the fact that he never called anyone by their names more than three minutes after an initial introduction. Most likely, Kingsley reassured himself, they realized it would have been difficult for even a person with a normal capacity for name recall to learn everyone's name in so short a space of time.

To his surprise, the majority of the witches and wizards present weren't employees of the Department of Magical Accidents and Catastrophes - or in a few cases, even employees of the Ministry - but had been drawn here by the overwhelming urge to do _something_.

And so they had. He spoke to a pair of Magical architects who were preparing to survey the physical and magical damage at Hogwarts. He spoke with a group of young witches who were planning out menus for food to make and deliver to families who had lost loved ones during the battle. He offered advice to a couple who were looking to start a collection to pay for new wands for the witches and wizards who had had them snapped by the Muggle-born Registration Commission. He sent a message via Patronus to Minerva McGonagall to inform her there was a potion master with a supply of healing potions and ingredients that needed to meet with somebody in Hogsmeade to complete their delivery.

But mostly, he listened. And the more he heard, the more he realized that he wasn't the only one working to fix things.

* * *

If Level three had been notable because of its positive energy, "Level four, Department for the Regulation and Control of Magical Creatures, incorporating Beast, Being, and Spirit Divisions, Goblin Liaison Office, and Pest Advisory Bureau," as the helpful but tiresome voice reminded him as he stepped out of the lift, was its polar opposite.

Several dozen goblins, shouting loudly both in English and Gobbledegook, filled the corridor and accosted him the moment the golden grilles of the lift had disappeared out of sight behind him. He reflexively made to draw his wand from its holster, but thankfully thought better of it - realizing what sort of message it would send to the upset goblins. He held up his hands in an attempt to silence them as he has the cheers on the level above, but they paid him no mind, instead seeming to get even louder.

"I can't understand you if you're all speaking at once!" he yelled. This was moderately more effective, and the noise lessened considerably as approximately half the goblins fell silent. Now he could make out individual words in amongst the clamour, including 'Potter,' 'gold,' 'dragon' and 'damage.' He even thought he might have heard a 'rebellion,' which would certainly not be the way to kick off his time as Minister.

He tried one last time to bring about silence without resorting to magic. He stuck two fingers in his mouth, one on either side of his tongue, which he curved into a peculiar - and particular - shape that his father had taught him many years before. When he blew out hard, a shrill whistle resounded through the corridor, much louder than he remembered it being. The goblins, taken by surprise, stopped their remaining shouting and fell still and quiet.

"That's better," said Kingsley, breathing a sigh of relief. "Can you choose someone from amongst yourselves to answer my questions?". There was a general murmuring as the assembled goblins looked to each other and discussed electing a representative. After about a minute, silence fell once more and the chosen goblin strode forward to stand before Kingsley.

"I will speak," he said in a raspy drawl.

"And you are?" He had to at least try.

"Lormuk."

"Lormuk, I'm Kingsley Shacklebolt, Minister for Magic." He extended his right hand to shake, but the goblin just looked at it warily.

"Temporary Minister," he growled, and Kingsley withdrew his hand feeling slightly stung, despite the truth of the statement. "We will shake when there is reason to shake. Not before."

"Then, Lormuk, I hope we can reach an accord that will allow us to do so," said Kingsley, magnanimously. "Have you brought your grievances to the Goblin Liaison Office? They would be the best prepared to-"

"Cuthbert Mockridge would have been prepared. Dirk Cresswell would have been prepared. The current Goblin Liaison Office is not prepared," interrupted Lormuk, and Kingsley could hear a murmur of assent from the other goblins in the corridor.

"Then I do apologize. The Ministry is currently undergoing a big transition, and many departments and offices find themselves under - or even unstaffed. I will make appointing a Head of the Goblin Liaison Office a top priority, Lormuk."

"You misunderstand me, Temporary Minister." The goblin smiled in a very disconcerting way, and Kingsley had to fight his urge to look away. "There is a Head. She's in her office right now, in fact. She is ignoring us, and has locked us out in this corridor."

"That's - well that's completely unacceptable."

"Now _that_ is something we could have shook on, Temporary Minister."

"Will you excuse me, Lormuk? I've an office to look into." Kingsley picked his way down the corridor carefully, avoiding the long-toed feet of the many goblins, until he found himself in front of a white wooden door with a silver placard that read 'Goblin Liaison Office.' He took a breath to steel himself against his own temper, then knocked loudly. There was no reply.

"She will not answer," hissed Lormuk. "She is too weak." Kingsley felt an alarm bell ring in his head at this statement. Physically felt it pounding against his right temple. He winced slightly with his eye on that side, trying to get the throbbing to abate, but his Auror training was telling him that something very bad had either happened or was going to.

"You speak as though you know something further, Lormuk." He had lost track of how many times he'd used the goblin's name now, but the intensity of the situation was helping to sear the name into his memory regardless.

"Is the Temporary Minister accusing us of something?" There was more grumbling from the assembled goblins at this, but Kingsley didn't rise to the bait.

"I am going to draw my wand and use it to open the door," he announced, hoping that his transparency would prevent the outburst he could feel building. The goblins fell silent and followed the path of his wand with their eyes as he drew it from beneath the sleeve of his robes slowly and deliberately. He prodded the door's knob silently, and heard the lock click open.

He knew he should re-holster his wand; put it away before the goblins felt threatened, but he could not bring himself to do it. There was no telling what he'd find on the other side of the door. He placed his hands on the knob, but didn't turn it yet, instead feeling that it would be prudent to inform anyone inside that he was going to enter.

"This is Kingsley Shacklebolt, Minister for Magic. I will be entering the room accompanied by Lormuk the goblin. We wish only to have a discussion." He turned the knob slowly, pausing to listen once it had turned fully. Still hearing no sound coming from within the office, he pushed the door open and felt his wand arm twitch. He wanted it at the ready, but knew intuitively that it would be an unwelcome show of power in front of the goblins.

It was not a large office, but it was comfortably appointed. Shelves of books, that appeared to be ledgers written in Gobbledegook, lined the wall behind a carved wooden claw-foot desk that was empty except for a copy of yesterday's evening edition of the Daily Prophet. Kingsley recognized the photo of a soaring dragon on the cover that slowly circled above a Gringotts that had a very damaged entrance. Additional photos of Harry, Hermione and Ron blinked up at him from under the fold, where their ever-growing list of crimes and transgressions were enumerated.

There were portraits of goblins on the walls that Kingsley was sure he'd learned about in History of Magic at some point, though now he could recall nothing about any of them. One of these was now speaking in rapid Gobbledegook to Lormuk, who was listening with an increasingly furrowed brow.

"Something I should know?" Kingsley asked, walking over to Lormuk and reading the placard below the goblin's portrait that informed him that this was Trurook the Tireless.

"Trurook says that she is over there." Lormuk's long finger pointed towards where the only light in the room streamed in through an enchanted window. Kingsley's eyes traced the shaft of light down from the window to the floor, and he felt his shoulders slump at the sight of a pale arm that lay haphazardly across the lit patch of carpet.

"Miss, are you all right," he shouted, his long legs quickly carrying him across the distance to where she lay. He already knew the answer, of course. She was not all right. She was dead. As he bent down to feel for a pulse on her neck, he could hear the two goblins - one flesh and one paint - continuing to converse. There was no pulse, but there were thin marks around her neck that led Kingsley to believe she had been strangled.

"What happened here?" he demanded of Trurook's portrait, which appeared thoroughly nonplussed at the query. Instead, Lormuk answered.

"Trurook says that after she locked herself in yesterday evening, she cast a silencing charm on the door so that she could not hear our protests, and then she spent the night drinking from that bottle there." The goblin once again pointed, this time to a small bottle on one of the bookshelves behind the desk.

"That doesn't explain why she's dead."

"This morning, at about dawn, she shouted and grabbed her right arm. She rolled up her sleeve, but the mark that was normally there was not as it once was. She sat quietly for many minutes, and then used her wand to kill herself."

Mark? Kingsley hadn't noticed a mark on her right arm, and that was the one lying in the pool of light on the floor. He reached for the arm and gently turned it over so that her hand was palm up. An angry red welt in vaguely the shape of the Dark Mark stared up at him. She had been a Death Eater, and Voldemort's death this morning had done something to the mark tattooed on his supporters' arms. He assumed that she realized that this meant he had been defeated, and then, trapped by the angry goblins outside, she had decided to end her life as opposed to risking Azkaban.

He had no reason to doubt the authenticity of the portrait's story, but he picked up the witch's wand from beside her where it had fallen. He bought his own wand's tip to hers, and whispered " _priori incantato_." The shadow of a rope slithered from the end of her wand and wrapped itself viciously around the disembodied silver neck that had appeared alongside it. The rope would have, of course, disappeared when she had died. " _Deletrius."_

Kingsley rose slowly back to a standing position as the shadow rope disappeared. He quickly conjured a red piece of parchment with his own wand, then scribbled a hasty note to Robards explaining the situation. With a flick of his wrist, it folded itself neatly into an aeroplane shape and flew through the office's open door.

"Well this certainly complicates things," he mused, and he stood thoughtful for a minute as Lormuk watched him intently. "Lormuk, I'd like to propose the following. I will send an owl and interrupt Cuthbert Mockridge's retirement to beseech him to return to the Ministry, at least temporarily. In the meantime, I'd ask that the goblins form a committee to determine who would be an appropriate replacement for our Death Eater friend here." The goblin's watery eyes widened slightly at this.

"You would give the goblins agency in appointing a Ministry official?"

"Provided there is no egregious reason that the candidate you select is unacceptable to me, yes. Shall we meet in four days time to discuss your grievances? That should give Cuthbert an opportunity to consider my proposal, and for your committee to agree on a candidate."

"Two days."

"Three."

"We have an accord, Temporary Minister," said Lormuk, extending his hand. Kingsley extended his own, feeling very relieved, and the two shook.

* * *

"Level five, Department of International Magical Cooperation, incorporating the International Magical Trading Standards Body, the International Magical Office of Law, and the International Confederation of Wizards, British Seats."

Kingsley breathed a sigh of relief as the grilles of the lift opened and allowed him to step out into the corridor of Level five. There were no goblins, no duels, and no dead Death Eaters. Yet, at least. He strode toward the main door of the Department, but before he could reach it, none other than his new assistant Collins emerged from within it.

"Minister!" Kingsley chuckled as Ambrose jumped slightly in recognition after turning his attention from quietly closing the door. This level had the sort of atmosphere that made you want to concentrate on making as little noise possible. "I've just been collecting your correspondence for you, Sir," he explained.

"Excellent! Anything I need to know about right now?" Collins began flipping through the pile of parchments in his hand, many of which bore very colourful and impressive looking seals.

"You've had congratulatory messages from the magical governments of France, Germany, America, Lichtenstein, Uganda, Australia-" as he flipped through each sheet of parchment, he read off the country from which it had arrived, but Kingsley had heard enough to get the point.

"And many more, I'm sure. Any of them require immediate action?"

"No Sir, not immediately. Though Ilvermorny, Durmstrang and Beauxbatons have offered their assistance in rebuilding Hogwarts, which seems the sort of thing that should be passed along - Sir."

"I quite agree. Forward the offers on to Minerva McGonagall using one of the Ministry owls. Anything else?"

"I - I was actually going to ask you that, Sir. Is there anything you require me to do?" Kingsley thought about everything he'd learned thus far through his in-person situation report. What were the most pressing issues? Probably the lack of Aurors and the goblins. Could Collins help with either of those?

"Actually, yes. Could you send an owl to Cuthbert Mockridge letting him know that I will be paying him a visit tonight? I'm afraid I don't know what time. I've a - proposal - for him." Somehow, Kingsley didn't think that this was the sort of favour he could ask through owl post.

"Very well, Sir. Will-"

"Actually, while you're on this level, could you reply to MACUSA? Thank them for their congratulations and ask them if they'd be able to spare any of their Aurors. As you know, we're a bit short in that department right now. Tell them to coordinate with Robards if they're willing." Collins opened his mouth, but Kingsley was too fast for him. "And yes, that will be all," he said with a smile.

* * *

"Level six, Department of Magical Transport, incorporating the Floo Network Authority, Broom Regulatory Control, Portkey Office, and Apparation Test Center." The voice was starting to get a bit grating. Kingsley found himself wondering if he could get someone from Experimental Charms to come up with a way to silence the voice unless there was a passenger on the lift wearing a visitor's badge. As he stepped out into the corridor of Level six, he made a mental note to look into it after things had returned to normal - no, that's not right. He wouldn't be - didn't want to be - Minister after things returned to normal. Did he?

The corridor was empty, but every doorway was wide open, and a magically amplified conversation was happening intermittently through the doors, though Kingsley was unable to make any sense of it.

"Have you tried the A9 wraparound?"

"Why would I try the A9? I thought we were re-routing out through Dunwich?"

"I'm seeing increased response after the flue recalibration!"

"Still can't achieve grate singularity!"

The conversations - he couldn't be sure, but it seemed like there were several overlapping ones occurring at once - continued as he strode down the corridor. He glanced into each room as he passed, and in each a similar scene presented itself. A witch or wizard was standing in front of a fireplace with a bright green flame - the only light in an otherwise dark room - holding their wands and manipulating what looked like a fire poker that was partially embedded in the hearth. They'd push, pull, twist or stroke the poker, then send a spell into the flames. These would flare in ways that seemed to mean something to the person operating the whole contraption, and frequently led to them adding to the conversations floating through the corridor.

"Still showing red on the switchboard!"

"Why am I getting traffic from Hogsmeade? I shouldn't be getting traffic from Hogsmeade!"

Kingsley reached the end of the corridor, where a large door stood open to the dark looking interior of the Floo Network Authority, and additional corridors split off to the left and right towards the other offices in the department. Figuring that the Floo Network seemed to be where all the action was, he ducked inside the open door of the main office.

"Hello?" he called. The office was dark enough that he was having difficulty seeing much of anything, and knew that he would until his eyes adjusted. The only source of light was a very large rectangle attached to one wall that was covered in what must have been at least a thousand little strings that were glowing and pulsing in many different colours. It was quite beautiful in its chaos, and Kingsley strode toward it slowly, trying to keep from running into anything in the darkness.

He had nearly reached it, when a dazzling sequence of pulses emanated from the lower right hand side of the rectangle and travelled along the strings attached in that region to various points closer to the centre.

"Do that again, Clearwater!" The magnified voice startled Kingsley, as it had come from only a few paces to his right. He squinted into the darkness, and slowly the figure of a tall thin witch seemed to materialize as though out of the darkness itself. Out of the corner of his eye he saw the pulse on the rectangle start again, and as it did so, the witch reached out a finger and traced the path of one of the strings, then grabbed it and yanked it out of the rectangle altogether. "That should fix the Hogsmeade traffic," she announced, presumably to one of the witches or wizards operating the fireplaces.

"Good morning, I'm King-"

" _Quietus._ Good afternoon by now, I should think, Minister." The witch, who Kingsley could see more clearly with each passing moment, never took her eyes off the rectangle, and he could see the flashes and pulses reflected in them.

"It was such a long morning that I think I assumed it would last forever."

"I'm sorry Minister, but I'm really behind it here. You see that great red blotch up there in the corner of the switchboard?" She held up a hand and pointed to a bright red patch punctuated by around twenty black spots. There were no strings in this area. "That's Hogwarts. This down here," she lowered her finger a good distance and brought it to rest over a particularly dense tangle of strings, "is the Ministry."

"There's no strings connecting them."

"Strings? Oh, the filaments. Yes, Hogwarts has been locked down for the last nine months by Snape and the Carrows. Nothing in, nothing out. But they didn't just sever the connections, they put up protection. _Sonorus._ There's a flicker in the red. About three times a second. Someone trying something new?" She had amplified her voice again with the wand that Kingsley now noticed she was holding.

"Hitting it with the recalibrated flue coordinates," answered a voice from somewhere down the corridor.

"Increase your frequency! If you get it high enough, maybe something will slip through in the flicker. _Quietus._ "

"I'm not above admitting that I have no idea what it is you're doing here." Kingsley was looking back at what he now knew was the switchboard and feeling slightly overwhelmed. "But we do need a connection to Hogwarts."

"So I keep hearing. Gits up on Level three won't shut up about it. I'm swimming in bloody memos."

"What can I do to expedite the process?"

"Let us work," the witch answered, sighing in exasperation. "I'm sorry Minister, but we _do_ know what we're doing, and we _will_ get there. These things just take time."

"Very well. Keep up the great work." As Kingsley turned to leave, he found his arm caught by the witch's hand, and she turned away from the switchboard for the first time.

"What? No _encouragement_ to work faster? No threats of bodily harm or wand-snapping?"

"Would it work?" He looked deeply into her eyes, the light of the switchboard still dancing upon them, and saw something in her expression soften.

"Not for them, no. For you - maybe." She brought her wand hand up to her throat and let go of Kingsley's arm with her other. " _Sonorus._ I think we're onto something here. Let's tear it down to the beginning and give it a swift boot to the arse." Kingsley smiled at her as she turned back to the board and started yanking out filaments. He silently walked back to the lift, and as he awaited its arrival, the cross-talk between the rooms behind him resumed.

* * *

Even before the lift came to a halt at "Level seven, Department of Magical Games and Sports, incorporating the British and Irish Quidditch League Headquarters, Official Gobstones Club, and Ludicrous Patents Office," Kingsley knew what he was in for when the grilles opened. Level seven was loud. Music was blaring from somebody's wireless, there were whoops and hollers from assorted voices, and, though he couldn't be certain, he thought he heard some sort of explosion.

As he expected, when he stepped out of the lift, it was to step into a party. The employees of the Department of Magical Games and Sports had always been the rowdiest bunch at Ministry functions, even eclipsing the Aurors, who had been known to let off some steam from time to time. And now, having something to celebrate for the first time in nearly a year, they apparently couldn't hold it in any longer.

"Ladies and Gentlemen, I give you your new Minister for Magic, Royal!" Ludo Bagman, from his elevated perch atop a table where he was apparently leading the festivities with a glass in his hand, had spotted Kingsley almost immediately after he'd entered the department's main office. A loud cheer went up from the group of witches and wizards gathered around the table, and Kingsley grinned at them obligingly.

"Thank you, thank you. I was just-"

"Somebody get this man a drink!" shouted Ludo, cutting across Kingsley before he could explain his mission. He found himself surrounded by a group of wizards trying to push bottles and glasses of various colours into his hand, all of which he refused politely.

"I can't, I can't. I've got a speech to give shortly." And then, suddenly, Bagman was standing next to him with an arm around his shoulder and a glass of Firewhiskey in his hand.

"Kingsley - I may call you Kingsley, can't I?" Ludo's speech was slightly slurred, and Kingsley could feel the unsteadiness with which he stood through the arm over his shoulder.

"Ludo, can I confirm that you don't actually work for the Ministry? I thought you were on the run from goblins."

"Pah!" snorted Bagman dismissively. "Goblins have bigger things to worry about at the moment, don't they? And no, I don't work for the Ministry any more." He tapped a visitor badge that was pinned to his chest that read 'Budo Lagman - Merrymaker.' "Unless you're offering. I'm available. Lots of experience."

"I'm looking for a new Head of the Goblin Liaison Office, actually." Kingsley tried his best to keep a straight face, but couldn't keep from chuckling when Bagman recoiled.

"No no no, that's - that's all right. I'll tell you what though. You need to think about petitioning the International Quidditch Association about allowing England into the Last Chance Qualifying for this year's World Cup. Without You-Know-Who around to cock it up, we might still make the tournament!"

"Quidditch? Today, Ludo?"

"Quidditch _every_ day, Kingsley!"

At that moment, the song that had been playing on the wireless ended, and there were scattered boos throughout the crowd. However, instead of a new song, an announcer's voice could be heard. Kingsley strained his ears to hear what was being said, and was able to catch intermittent snatches.

"-here in the Ministry - awaiting new Minister - understandably running late-"

"Here, give me the glass, Ludo." Kingsley grabbed the Firewhiskey, and downed it in one go, to the loud approval of everyone close enough to see it happen. "I've got a speech to give."

* * *

"Atrium," the voice informed him, as the lift clanked and rattled to a stop. The Firewhiskey had helped, but Kingsley still felt like he was jangling and clattering too, as nerves began to take hold. But he could do this. He'd already done it. Had been doing it all morning. As the golden grilles of the lift split and opened, he stood up straighter and threw his shoulders back, but when he saw the number of people in the Atrium, his confidence faltered slightly.

He had been expecting the press of course, and some Ministry employees, too. But there were easily a hundred people gathered in the open space where the 'Magic is Might' statue had once stood. He silently thanked whoever had had the foresight to have it removed, and then strode out of the lift.

Cries of "Minister!" immediately rose from the reporters, but then all of their shouted questions jumbled together into an incomprehensible monotone. He could hear the flashbulbs popping - feel the heat of them as though each was an explosion in miniature. He strode to the middle of the group, withdrew his wand from his sleeve, and put it up to his throat to amplify his voice.

"Good afternoon. You-Know-Who is dead. He was killed this morning during a battle at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. By now, you will have heard some of the particulars, and I'm sure that more will become known in the following days and weeks. I want to thank all of the brave individuals who participated in this morning's battles, and offer my sincerest condolences to all those who lost family and friends this morning."

"For the past nine months, all of us have been preoccupied with our own safety - the safety of our loved ones and our families…"

Yes, he could do this.


	4. Priorities

**Disclaimer:** My apologies to Ms. Rowling, from whom I am simply borrowing everything. She did all the heavy lifting, for which I'm grateful. My back can't really stand up to much weight anymore.

* * *

 **Chapter Four**

 **Priorities**

* * *

" _We are one._ _One nation, one people, one light. We must work together to shine brightly on the injustices in our society. We must shine brightly to ensure that those who so bravely sacrificed everything this morning will not have died in vain. And we must shine so brightly that the shadows that have surrounded us can not provide a refuge for the hatred that we have this day beaten."_

" _These things we must do. These things we will do. Thank you."_

* * *

Hermione Granger sat frozen in her seat in the Gryffindor common room and stared down at the wireless she was holding in her hands. She'd found it well hidden behind a battered copy of The Standard Book of Spells, Grade Four as she'd poked around for something to read to stay awake. She'd smiled as she'd pulled it out, imagining a group of students huddled around it waiting anxiously for Potterwatch to start; perhaps they would have had a lookout stationed just outside the portrait hole to warn of a Carrow's impending arrival.

She had placed the wireless on the end table that sat adjacent to her favourite armchair, and turned it on at a low volume. She had only intended for it to be background noise. An atmosphere against which her imagination could work its magic as she read the first bit of fiction she could allow herself to escape into in nine months. But it was - different - reading for fun. It lacked the urgency she'd become accustomed to in the tent, where she'd often find herself frantically flipping through spell books and wizarding histories in search of the one obscure fact or reference that would get them closer to - to surviving.

And so, after two hours of reading the same three pages over and over, Hermione couldn't even remember the name of the book she'd picked up. Inside her head, the war raged on, and she didn't feel remotely comfortable doing something so trivial as reading - she had flipped the book over in her hands to remind herself of the title - I Capture the Castle.

It was at that point she'd picked up on Kingsley's reassuring voice crackling out of the wireless beside her, and she'd eagerly set the book aside to listen more attentively. It had been - in her estimation - a somewhat rambling and disjointed speech, but the raw emotion in the Minister's voice was palpable. This was not the fretful and maladroit Fudge, or the shrewd and dogmatic Scrimgeour. Instead, the wizarding world finally had a leader that cared. And not only that, he appeared to care about the very same things she herself believed in.

' _Shine brightly on the injustices in our society.' Well honestly, isn't that just what I've been trying to do for years? S.P.E.W.s entire existence was dedicated to precisely that! And Buckbeak's trial! And then -_

Hermione let the wireless fall into her lap, and brought her right hand up to trace the thin scar that ran diagonally down the left side of her throat. She closed her eyes as her fingers worried the smooth ridge, but rather than the darkness she'd expected to find, Bellatrix Lestrange was towering over her and cackling madly.

The floor was cold beneath her. That was what she remembered. Her body was on fire. The air she breathed was on fire. But the floor was cold. In the spaces between - the moments of cognisance when her body hadn't been splintering into a billion shards - that cold had drained her inferno of pain.

But it hadn't stopped. It had continued to siphon away things she wanted to hold onto. Her dignity had been the first to sink into those infinitely cold stones, leaving her begging for mercy - mercy from a witch who knew it not. Bellatrix danced and crowed above her now, relishing the opportunity for malice.

Hope had been next. She'd grasped for it desperately - fought to hold on as she knew she must. But it had ultimately been pushed out by an all-consuming fear that she was going to die. The floor's ravenous cold did nothing to help with this, as the thought was already as frozen as the stones themselves.

Yet still it continued; the seemingly endless cycle. Fire and pain to break her into countless fragments, and then the cold to absorb those pieces that she couldn't keep hold of. Her will had left her. Her pride. Piece by piece, Bellatrix tore her down until she was nothing. Had always been nothing, would always be nothing. And then -

"Hey."

And then Ron had come. Picked up her pieces, and started fitting them back together. One by -

"Hermione, come on. Open your eyes."

She felt the wireless removed from her lap, and heard the muffled double-click of it being set back unevenly on the side table. She smelled his shampoo and the soap that Fleur had used on their laundry at Shell Cottage. Then she felt his hand over the top of hers; a brilliant warmth cutting through the cold. He pulled her hand away from the scar on her neck, and then placed it in her lap before letting go of it and placing both of his own hands on her shoulders. She could feel herself shivering violently beneath them.

"It's all right Hermione," he said. "You're safe." And she knew it was true. She opened her eyes slowly, and found herself looking directly into Ron's concerned and - unless she was mistaken - slightly embarrassed face. He was on his knees in front of the chair, leaning forward slightly so that their heads were quite close. He looked, and smelled, impossibly clean.

"Hi," he whispered, once her eyes had focused. No grand pronouncements of love, no worried suggestion of the Hospital Wing, just 'Hi.' It was more than she'd hoped for, and more than enough. He was here. That's all she needed.

Hermione took a deep breath and tried to force her body to stop shaking before she answered, but was only moderately successful. "Hi."

"You were there again?" There was no need for him to specify where _there_ was. She didn't speak, but nodded quickly before biting her lip and turning her head to the side. She could feel tears welling up in her eyes, and she didn't want him to see her like this. "Does it hurt? The scar, I mean. It's just I - I see you rubbing it and-" but he broke off and didn't finish his thought.

"It reminds you of Harry?"

"Well yes, I suppose," Ron admitted. Hermione waited for him to elaborate - to suggest something foolish about curse scars or horcruxes - but he didn't say anything further. Instead, he did something he never had before. As she continued to look off to her right and blink back tears, she felt two fingers trace the line of her scar. Fingers that were not her own. She turned back to face him so hastily that he jerked his hand away as though burned. "I'm sorry!" he nearly shouted, letting go of her shoulders and straightening up. The closeness between them, closeness she hadn't even realized she had been feeling, evaporated.

"No, don't!" She wanted him back. The smell of him, the warmth of his breath on her.

"I'm sorry, I won't do it again." Hermione groaned audibly as Ron pulled back even further. He'd misunderstood. Of course he had. He wouldn't be Ron Weasley, nor she Hermione Granger, if communication between them didn't get misinterpreted at least three times in the course of any conversation.

"That's not - Ron, you did nothing wrong. I was just surprised. I wasn't expecting you to touch my - my scar, that's all."

"All right," he said cautiously, tension draining from his face and shoulders. She could tell that he'd been worried that he'd done something unforgivable. Something that would endanger their new - whatever this was. He leaned forward again, but put his hands on the arms of the chair rather than her shoulders. "You know, you never did answer the question, and that's not like you." He grinned slightly and gave Hermione the look - _the look_ \- that had done her in all those years ago. One eyebrow half cocked in challenge, eyes sparkling impishly below. She felt the corners of her mouth twitching against her will.

"No, it doesn't hurt." And that much was true, so far as it went. "I haven't gotten used to it yet, that's all." And that was only a half-truth. The whole truth - that she reflexively fiddled with it when thinking about her role in the war effort - was something that Ron didn't need to know.

"Can I - can I touch it again?" There was a hopefulness in his voice that reminded her of a child at Christmas anticipating the opening of his presents. Not that she wasn't intently looking forward to it herself, of course. Still though, she didn't want to seem overeager.

"I don't see why, there are lots of other parts of me you could touch, you know." So much for not sounding overeager. That hadn't been what she meant to say at all! Hermione felt warmth returning to her as blood rushed to her face, and a quick glance at Ron confirmed that she wasn't the only one blushing. "Well that clearly came out wrong." Her voice was nearly an octave higher than normal, and the ridiculousness of it made her blushing intensify. "What's wrong with us, Ron?"

"Wrong with us?" He sounded almost affronted, and she knew she'd made another mistake.

"Yes, wrong with us. It was never like this between us before! This-" she grasped for the right word in her mind, "-awkward conversation, and the -" But she never got the chance to complete her thought, because Ron did yet another thing he'd never done before. He leaned still further forward, and lowered his head to one side. Hermione widened her eyes in shock as his lips found, not her own lips, as she'd been expecting - hoping even, but instead her scar.

Merlin, his lips were soft. That was her only conscious thought for nearly ten seconds as tingles travelled the entire length of her body, and she found herself shivering for a completely different reason. But then, as it so often did, her brain began to work.

"Ronald Weasley, you are _kissing_ my scar!"

"No, I'm kissing your neck. Your scar just happens to be there. And you didn't say no." His lips never fully parted from her skin as he spoke, and the vibrations of his voice made them buzz up against her. It was starting to tickle, and she began to squirm in the chair.

"What do you mean, I didn't say no? You asked if you could touch, not kiss!" It was getting to be too much, and she heard a squeak escape from her mouth, but this only seemed to encourage Ron, who redoubled his efforts, even going so far as to nip playfully with his teeth. She brought her hands up to the top of his head and tangled her fingers in his hair. It was still slightly damp from what must have been a shower, and though she had intended to push him away, she instead ran her hands through it.

"You know, I reckon that we've been thinking too much. That's what's _wrong_ with us." Ron gave her neck a temporary reprieve and straightened his head to look her in the eye. "That kiss before - in the Room of Requirement -" Hermione had no idea why he felt the need to specify which kiss he was talking about, that had been _the_ kiss. It had been - well-

"Magic." The word slipped out of her almost silently, but Ron paused and she could tell by his grin that he had understood. That he agreed.

"For years I've been thinking so bloody hard - sorry," he added automatically, as she frowned at his use of language, "about how our first kiss would happen. Where it would be, what I could say to make it happen, what it would feel like, you know."

"I _do_ know." Hermione smiled sadly as she thought back upon the countless nights she'd spent dreaming up imaginative ways of getting a certain obstinate redhead to confess his undying love to her.

"Anyway, all that thinking got me -"

"Got us," she corrected.

"Right, got us. Got us nowhere. But then, the kiss -" he broke off, and she could tell by the glassy look that adorned his eyes that he was reliving the intense passion of that moment in his head.

"The kiss," she prompted after ten seconds or so. Ron's eyes slowly refocused, and his cheeks reddened slightly.

"Sorry, yeah, the kiss. Which was bloody brilliant, by the way. Sorry."

"No, you're quite right, it _was_ bloody brilliant." Ron laughed rather loudly at her use of the inelegant turn of phrase, and Hermione felt his hot spearmint breath wash over her.

"Language, Ms. Granger," he managed to get out once his laughter had waned into something more akin to a chuckle. Hermione just shrugged and tried to look indifferent to Ron's mirth, but it was a losing battle, and she wound up having to disentangle one of her hands from his hair to cover her mouth as she started to giggle silently.

"Anyway," continued Ron, once he regained control, "what I mean is that we were both thinking and not doing. And then I think we both sort of - sort of forgot to think there in the Room of Requirement. I think we need more of that. More of just - forgetting ourselves and giving in to what we want."

The hand that Hermione had left in Ron's hair stopped its gentle back and forth, and she narrowed her eyes. 'Forgetting ourselves.' There was something about that phrase that deeply unsettled her, but she set that aside for a moment, because Ron had cut right to the heart of her biggest fear. "You think I think too much? That I'm too bookish, or-"

"No that's not it all!" Ron cut across her almost in desperation, and she breathed easier seeing that even the idea of it upset him as much as it had her. This time it had been her that had misunderstood. "I'm not - I'm not doing a good job of explaining this, am I? I'm sorry."

"Try again. I promise I won't interrupt or jump to conclusions." Ron nodded, but looked down and sighed deeply before continuing. She could tell that he was very nervous about saying the wrong thing.

"First, I don't want you to change. You're brilliant and frustrating and perfect and I - well - what I want is for you to know that you don't always have to be brilliant and frustrating and perfect when you're with me. You don't always have to be Hermione Granger, brightest witch of her age. Because you're so much more than that." Ron's head dropped even lower, and Hermione saw a tear hanging from the tip of his nose, which was the only part of his face she could still see. "I wish - I wish I had the words to - to make you understand what I'm trying to say."

"Well, honestly, I _do_ know a lot of words, but it sounds to me like you're looking for just three of them." He looked up, and she smiled warmly at him. Reached out and wiped the tears from the corners of his eyes.

"I love you." The warmth that had been building in her since Ron had arrived and saved her - again - from the Malfoy Manor in her head, exploded outward and she felt herself floating on it. She'd been imagining this conversation in her head for four years, and now it was here, and -

 _And you know what, I_ am _thinking too much._

"I love you too." She leaned forward to kiss him, but Ron had apparently had the same idea at the same moment and their heads collided awkwardly in the space between them.

"Hey, it's my turn, all right?" asked Ron as he rubbed the spot where Hermione's forehead had hit his.

"How do you mean?"

"Well you kissed me the first time. I want to even up the score a bit."

"I'm quite certain that we'll both come out ahead, regardless of score," she said with a grin, and Ron responded with a grin of his own.

And then he was on her. She hadn't seen it happen, couldn't later explain how it had come to pass, but he was in the chair with her, and his mouth was on hers. And there was only Ron. Only those soft lips, and those gentle hands and that delicious tongue.

And, for a few blissful minutes, she forgot herself.

* * *

An eternity, a lifetime, or an instant later - she honestly couldn't be sure of which - Hermione was standing outside the doorway to what she believed was the seventh year girls' dormitory. She was panting slightly, and it had absolutely nothing to do with the climb up the stairs. In fact, at the moment she felt as though she was flying.

It had been torture - no, she'd have to stop using that metaphor, wouldn't she? - leaving Ron to finish up guard duty down in the common room. But even though he had insisted that it didn't bother him, the fact that he was clean and she was still covered in blood, sweat and burned hair had gradually become more prominent in her thoughts. Eventually the Siren song of a shower and some clean clothes had lured her - ironically - _away_ from temptation.

Still smiling broadly, she smoothed flat her ruffled clothes, and smugly wished that Lavender and Parvati (but mostly Lavender) could have been inside so that they could see her take her victory stroll to the bathroom on the far side of the dormitory. But then her smile faltered as she remembered that she didn't know what had become of Lavender after Fenrir Greyback had attacked her. She hadn't been one of the bodies lined up in the hall at least, so Hermione felt slightly less guilty as she pushed open the door.

It looked largely the same as she remembered from the six years she had spent in this room, what with the four poster beds draped in scarlet and gold, the leaded window in the alcove overlooking the grounds, and the soft candlelight flickering from each bedside table.

But it wasn't like coming home. Not the way she had anticipated it being, anyway. Too much had changed since she'd last been in this room, including herself. Her dreams, her fears, her motivations - all were different now than they once had been. She recalled reading about the ship of Theseus, and wondered if it could be applied to people as well. Was she still the same person she'd been before she'd gone on the run with the boys? Or had so many pieces of her changed that she was fundamentally different?

A soft sniffling pulled her out of her rumination as she crossed the dormitory, and she turned to look at the bed she had once called her own. Ginny was sitting on it up near the pillow, and she had her knees drawn up to her chest. Her eyes were puffy and red, and she had clearly been watching Hermione's progress across the room.

"Ginny?" Hermione's voice sounded abnormally loud in the quiet stillness of the dorm, and both girls jumped slightly at it. "What are you doing here? I thought - you shouldn't be alone!"

"I didn't intend to _be_ alone," the younger girl said shortly. "Or did you not recognize whose bed I chose?"

"Oh Ginny, I'm sorry! I just sort of assumed you would be with Bill and Fleur or your parents - or down in the sixth year dorms." Hermione had tacked to the right off of her initial course towards the bathroom's door, and was now standing beside the bed Ginny was occupying.

"And I just sort of assumed that my best friend was going to lend me a shoulder to cry on. Or maybe need one herself, given all - you know."

Hermione turned and seated herself on the edge of the bed, and all of the leftover euphoria from her encounter with Ron evaporated. "I'm so sorry, Ginny. If I-"

"No, I get it. I do. You've got your priorities right now, and I'm not one of them. But-" Ginny broke off and turned her head to look away. Hermione desperately wanted to hug her, but the younger girl's body language was clearly indicating that such a gesture would be unwelcome.

"But?" Hermione had learned from countless confrontations with Ron that it was often best to get everything out in the open, particularly when it was a Weasley who was holding things in.

"I am _really_ getting sick of waiting." She turned back to look Hermione square the eye, and the intensity of her glare was almost frightening. "Nine months. Nine _effing_ months, Hermione. You were there, Ron was there - Harry - Harry was there, and then poof, you're gone."

"You knew why we-"

"Of course I knew," she protested, "but that doesn't make it any easier to get left behind. Do you know what it feels like to watch people you love just disappear like that? To not know if you'll ever see them alive again?"

And suddenly, Hermione could feel the cold raindrops drenching her as she watched Ron storm off towards the tree line surrounding their camp site. Her screams for him to stop echoed in her head, but she knew that they'd go unheeded. He hadn't stopped, hadn't even looked back. He had broken her heart that day. Broken far more than that.

"I do," she said simply, hoping that Ginny wouldn't ask her to elaborate. Thankfully, she was so worked up that she paid no mind to Hermione's pained expression.

"I felt so helpless! I knew you were out there fighting for your lives - for all our lives, and it _killed_ me that I couldn't help. There were days in July and August that I considered running away and trying to find you, but I knew that with the _brilliant_ Hermione taking care of the protective enchantments there would be no chance of me finding you. I haven't felt that alone since first year."

Ginny hung her head down to her knees, and Hermione took the opportunity to reposition herself closer to her friend. She could sense the break coming, and she had to be there to take advantage of it when it did.

"And then September came. I thought it would be nice to finally have someone to talk to, because Mum and Dad just - well you can imagine what _that_ was like - but with the Carrows controlling everything at Hogwarts, it just wasn't-" She fell silent again, and Hermione found herself wondering just what Hogwarts had been like under the Death Eaters' regime. It occurred to her that she and the boys might not be the only ones with secrets to keep about the last year or so.

"Anyway, last night I thought it was all going to change for the better. Harry was back, you and Ron were back - Merlin, even Percy was back - and we were going to make our stand. I thought it was my chance to not feel so alone any more. But now, Fred is gone, Mum is a wreck, Dad is hanging on by a thread, George is somewhere else entirely, Percy _wishes_ he was somewhere else entirely, you and Ron are busy snogging each other - which, don't think you're going to get away with not telling _that_ story - and Harry is completely ignoring me. If anything, I'm even more lonely now!"

And there it was, the break in Ginny's defences that she had been anticipating. Without a word, Hermione reached her arms around her friend and squeezed gently, trying to make her feel that there was at least one person that cared. Up against her, she could feel the friction that had sprung up between them melting away. They would be all right.

"We heard about you trying to steal the sword," she offered, still trying to keep the conversation moving forward. "That actually helped the three of us out a lot." Of course it had also led - at least indirectly - to the scene that had run through her head just a moment ago, but Ginny certainly didn't need to know that - would absolutely never hear about it from her. That story was no one but Ron's to share.

"All right, I'll admit that that was pretty fun," and for just a moment Hermione could see the spark in her friend's eyes that normally made her seem so vital. "But how in Merlin's name did that help? We thought it wound up being a complete disaster. We were actually afraid that we'd made it impossible for you to get the sword after Snape shipped it off somewhere safer."

"Well-" Hermione frowned as she considered, yet again, just what it was she could safely divulge. She wanted very much to tell Ginny everything. Knew that she deserved it. But doing so without discussing it with Harry and Ron first felt like a massive betrayal of their trust. But on the other hand-

"More secrets. Why am I not surprised?" Ginny threw up her hands in frustration. "Is there no end to them?"

"Honestly, no, there isn't. I'm not even sure that _I_ know everything that happened last night. But I do want to share with you Ginny. Really. So let's start small. We overheard a conversation about your attempted - liberation, let's call it - while we were in our tent.

"'Liberation,' I like that. Sounds a bit more noble than nicking something from the Headmaster's office."

"Anyway," Hermione pressed on, though she grinned at Ginny conspiratorially, "Snape shipped the sword off to Gringotts after you got caught, and the Goblin that actually placed it in a vault quit shortly thereafter. He wound up catching fish in a stream near our tent one night with Dirk Cresswell, Ted Tonks and Dean Thomas."

"Dean!" Ginny didn't look remotely angry any more, and she had shifted her weight forward, leaning into the story that Hermione was telling.

"Right. It was really just sheer dumb luck. And we were in desperate need of some at that point, as we'd reached something of a dead end in our task."

"Which was?" wheedled Ginny, letting the last word draw out as her voice increased in pitch.

"Nice try, but I said we'd start small." Ginny feigned indignation, but Hermione just rolled her eyes before continuing. "It turns out that the Goblin realized that the sword was actually a fake that-"

"A fake?" Ginny nearly shouted it, and Hermione brought a finger up to her lips. "You mean that we spent weeks planning our brilliant heist, and it was a fake all along?" she asked, quieter.

"I'm afraid so."

"That really sucks. And now I'm even more confused about how any of this was a benefit to the three of you."

"You gave us hope." Ginny scoffed, but Hermione reached out and placed a hand on her shoulder. " I'm completely serious. Things were looking dire, and we were basically lost. News that there were still people fighting on our behalf meant the world to us. But if you _need_ something more concrete, we realized that the sword had to be extremely important for - for some reason - if it had a replica like that made. And from there we figured out _why_ it was important."

"Which is?" tried Ginny, once again drawing out the 'is.'

"A story for another day, I'm afraid."

"Aww, but we were just getting to the good part!" No, Hermione thought, they most certainly weren't. The weeks after that breakthrough had been - unequivocally - the worst of her life. She smiled ruefully.

"I'm trying."

"I know, and I appreciate it. I'm sorry I was mad at you. Especially since it isn't really you that I want to be mad at."

"Harry?" Ginny sighed loudly then flopped backwards on the bed so that her head was on the pillow.

"It's like he's forgotten that I exist. He hasn't said one word to me since the battle ended, not even about Fred. I feel like I should be absolutely furious with him."

"But?" Hermione laid back on the bed as well, then rolled over to her side and propped herself up on an elbow so that she was looking at her friend. She was reminded of countless nights sharing a room, laughter and gossip at the Burrow.

"But I can't be mad at him. He's been through so much - achieved so much - and it just feels like being angry with him would be selfish. And he deserves better than that. I just want him - need him - to be happy."

"I wish you could have seen the look on his face while we were eavesdropping on that conversation about the sword. He looked so proud when he heard that you had been involved, and then, after it came out that you had been caught and punished, he was absolutely terrified. He spent an inordinate amount of time looking at the Marauder's Map, too. Following your dot, I think. Making sure you were safe." Ginny groaned, much to Hermione's surprise.

"That's all well and good," and the look on her face clearly showed that she was touched, "but that map would have come in handy here at Hogwarts."

"I can imagine." A companionable silence passed over them, and Hermione rolled onto her back and settled her head on the pillow. She reached out the hand that was in between her and Ginny, and used it to search for Ginny's, which she grabbed when she felt it. They lay there holding hands for several minutes, and Hermione's eyes began to droop. She hadn't slept in something like thirty hours, and now, finding herself staring up at the familiar swathes which wrapped her bed, sleep seemed like a pleasant inevitability.

"Do you think I should confront him? Or give him space?"

"W-ell," Hermione yawned, opening her eyes, "I've been trying to give him some space. He's seemed to need it since-"

 _Since he died._

"Since the forest." Ginny's voice was very quiet, and Hermione knew she was thinking of that awful moment when Hagrid had emerged from the forest carrying what they had believed to be Harry's corpse. Hermione, too, lost herself briefly in the memory, then shook herself out of it. Her parents, Malfoy Manor, Ron leaving, now Harry's death - why were her thoughts today a greatest hits record of misery?

"Right," she said finally, gripping Ginny's hand a bit tighter, mostly so that she would get a reassuring squeeze of her own in return. "But - I'm not exactly the right one to ask for romantic advice about Harry. I think there's a reason why we've never really-"

"Of course there is. He's rather tall and has the same colour hair as me."

"Oh, honestly. All right, fine, yes. I've only had eyes for your brother for years. But beyond that, Harry and I would be so terribly - ugh." She had meant to say dull, but the taste of bile rising at the back of her throat had cut her off. "Can we change the subject? I'm getting a bit ill even thinking about it."

"Sure, would you rather talk about his dreamy green eyes that you could lose yourself in for days, or that sexy little grin he gets when he's incredibly happy and he thinks that no one is looking at him."

"You are _incorrigible_!"

"Oh, and he's got this ticklish spot right under-"

"Your brother's tongue is delicious!" Hermione blurted out in desperation. Ginny fell silent immediately, then burst out into a fit of giggles which Hermione promptly joined.

"Well then, shall we call that one a draw?" asked Ginny once they'd both worked the laughter out of their systems.

"Fair enough."

"But I understand your point. Doing things your way won't necessarily work with Harry. I'll need to do things my way, because that's what he fell for in the first place."

"That's - that's not at all what I said."

"But it is what you meant." There was a brief pause while Hermione considered this.

"I - yes, you're right." The admission was almost painful. She'd spent the last nine months of her life - seven years, really - looking out for Harry's every need, and it seemed like the time had come for her to turn over that role to someone else. She sighed heavily, but it turned into a yawn halfway through. "Trust yourself, Ginny. I think you know what it is he needs right now. Better than I do, at least. Heck, probably better than Harry himself."

Hermione felt Ginny let go of her hand and the mattress shift beside her. She turned her head toward her friend, and saw that she was in the process of sitting up. "Ginny?"

"Thanks Hermione. Really." She bent down and gave Hermione a quick hug. "But I think I've realized that there's somewhere else I need to be right now."

"Yes, I understand." She smiled sadly and tried to remember what it was that Ginny had said at the start of this whole conversation. "You've got your priorities right now, and I'm not one of them."

"Exactly," replied Ginny with a smile of her own. "Glad you see it my way." She turned, and her hair whipped about her head as she did, catching the light from the window in the alcove. She seemed very - alive, and Hermione was acutely aware that that was something she'd never be able to offer Harry at the moment.

And as she lay back down and stared up at the coverings of her bed again, her last conscious thought before sleep took her was that she was happy that Harry would have a nice surprise waiting for him when he woke up.

* * *

 **Author's note:** This chapter kicked my butt, and I'm glad to have it behind me. I'd really appreciate any thoughts you might have on it, even if they're less than complimentary. Thank you for reading, and thanks to all of you who take the time to leave a review. They really did help me to persevere during the writing of this chapter.


	5. The Reunion

**Disclaimer:** I have run out of witty disclaimers

* * *

 **Chapter Five**

 **The Reunion**

* * *

His head hurt. His chest hurt. That was how he realized he was no longer dreaming. It was an unfortunate thing to discover too, since his dream had been remarkably pleasant. He'd been expecting nightmares, of course - Tom Riddle in the forest, the bodies lined up in the Great Hall, line after line of survivors all waiting to blame him for a loved one's death.

Instead, he'd been back at the Burrow. There had been a Quidditch match played on the backs of dragons, an adventure involving a monster made of Muggle detritus that had somehow formed in Mr. Weasley's shed, and an evening spent under the stars in the orchard.

And throughout it all, Ginny had been at his side. It had been a chaste dream - he hadn't so much as kissed her - but her smile had kept him company as they'd chased each other on their dragons and largely disregarded the rest of the Quidditch match, tried to flank the telephone-toaster-lawnmower hybrid so they could unplug it, and lain on their backs laughing as Fred and George had set off fireworks.

But now there was the pain, and there was no Fred. He breathed in deeply through his nose, and he felt his chest tighten against his lungs as they tried to expand. He groaned quietly as the pressure increased, and he heard a flurry of activity break out in the room around him. He listened intently to the rustling of fabric and the scuffling of trainers over the stone floor, trying to determine if this was some sort of a threat. He had his wand - _his_ wand - underneath his pillow, and his off-hand was currently just inches away from it propping up his head as he lay on his side.

"Ron, stop!" The voice was Ginny's, and Harry felt his hand - which had begun to flex in anticipation of grabbing his wand - relax. "You said that I could be there when he woke up!"

"Yes, I said you could be _there_ when he woke up. There, on that bed. Far away from him." The sounds of what Harry now recognized as a scuffle started once again, and Harry opened his eyes. Without his glasses, he wasn't able to make out particulars, but it was readily apparent that a short red-headed figure was being held back by a much taller red-head some ten paces or so from where he lay.

"Good morning, Harry!" Ginny called, swinging what appeared to be an elbow into her brother's abdomen. Ron swore quite loudly, and Harry felt the urge to laugh, but swallowed it quickly at the thought of what it would do to the pain in his chest. As it was, he still grimaced.

"Morning? Have I been asleep that long?" It certainly didn't seem as though he'd been asleep for a terribly long time, and the light and shadows in the dormitory weren't in positions he typically remembered them being in during the morning. He shifted his neck slightly so he could look out the window, and winced as the ache in his head made its presence known once again. The sun was still well above the western horizon.

"Oh, no. Sorry. I was just trying to - for Merlin's sake, Ron, that. is. my. boob." There was a brief moment of horrified silence as the two siblings ceased their squabble, and Ron quickly backed away. It was broken when Harry found that - try as he might - he couldn't prevent himself from laughing this time. It was even more painful than he'd feared. Searing pain coursed from his chest and down the left side of his body with each contraction of his diaphragm, and before he knew it, he was clutching at his chest as he gasped for breath and his eyes watered.

"Harry!" He didn't know if it was Ron or Ginny who had yelled it. Perhaps it had been both of them; but within seconds they were at his bedside.

"I'm - all right," he insisted through clenched teeth, "I just - need to - to get up." He attempted to swing his feet over the edge of the bed, but they got caught in the sheets he was covered in, and the unexpected manor in which his movement was halted caused another sharp pain to run through him.

"Mate, you look anything but all right. Ginny, run up to the Hospital Wing and fetch Madam Pomfrey."

"Like hell I will!" The glare with which she fixed Ron would have been enough to give even a stampede of Erumpents pause, but Ron was just as oblivious as he ever was when it came to all things Ginny.

"All I've heard out of you in the last hour or so - since you came downstairs from your nap - is how much you want to help, and how you feel left out. Well here's your bloody chance. I'm asking for your help. Harry needs help." Harry opened his mouth to protest that he really didn't need help; that it was just a stitch in his chest that was keeping him from breathing fully, but Ginny didn't let him get a word in edgewise.

"Ron, you're ridiculous. You're just trying to send me away again! To put me on the sidelines one more time! You're right though, Harry does need help, so why don't _you_ run and get Madam Pomfrey? I'm pretty sure you remember the way." In a huff, Ginny twirled halfway around and flopped heavily onto the bed next to Harry, as though looking to punctuate her argument with a display of stubbornness. Ron flapped his blurry mouth several times in a fashion Harry had usually only seen after he'd been stymied during an argument with Hermione.

"I - but, Harry - I can't leave." He fell silent for a few seconds, and Harry felt the pain in his chest subside substantially during the respite, but it was short-lived. "Kreacher!" shouted Ron, triumphantly. "Harry, you can call Kreacher, and then he can get Madam Pomfrey for us. Hell, he can have her here right quick if she consents to side-along apparate with him."

"I am not calling Kreacher, Ron," said Harry with an exasperated sigh. "He's earned himself a break. Not to mention, _I'm perfectly fine!_ " He raised his voice slightly to emphasize this last point, but wished he hadn't when he felt his chest tighten again. He was pretty sure, however, that he did a passable job of hiding his distress.

"Harry, you're not fine," insisted Ginny. She placed a hand on his side, and even through the covers Harry felt a crackle of electricity run through him at her touch. Stupidly, he found himself trying to dismiss it as his imagination because clearly there could be no electricity at Hogwarts. Hermione's infatuation with Hogwarts: a History had taught him that much at least.

"Look. I can't stop you from getting Madam Pomfrey. In fact, I expect it was inevitable that I get examined at some point, given what happened last night, but-"

"You heard him, Ginny, go and fetch her."

"I am not your bloody house elf!" There was another prolonged silence as the out-of-focus siblings stared at each other, and Harry tried to will himself invisible, hoping to stay out of the line of fire when the inevitable hexes started flying. But to his great surprise, it was Ron who ended the stand-off.

"Fine." He gave a half-hearted little shrug that threw his hands out to the sides a bit, then slumped his shoulders. "I'll go and get her, just - just don't-" He broke off, reddening slightly. Harry wasn't quite sure what to make of it. On the one hand, Ron - _Ron_ \- had just de-escalated an argument, but on the other hand, it seemed like the prat was going to be just as protective of his sister as he'd always been. Harry really hadn't intended to have _this_ conversation just yet, and he certainly didn't want to have it with Ginny present, but he had to make Ron understand - understand what, exactly? Even Harry himself didn't know what the state of his relationship was, or if there even was one.

"Ron, I understand that she's your sister, and that you want to look out for her, but-"

"Her? Look out for _her_? Harry, mate, you've got it all backwards. Right now I'm looking out for you!"

"What the hell is that supposed to mean?" Harry could feel Ginny bristling beside him, and if she had been holding a wand, he was certain that sparks would have been shooting out the end of it. "Is that all I am to you, Ron? Just another threat?" Harry's hand was starting to flex again, and he inched it very slowly toward his concealed wand. He wanted to be prepared, if needed, to disarm Ginny. But for now, she seemed content to trade verbal jabs as opposed to magical ones. "Am I just one more dire situation that 'The Chosen One' has gotten dragged into? One last predicament that he needs saving from?"

"That's - that's not-" stammered Ron. He took a deep breath and Harry thought he could just make out his eyes narrowing dangerously. "You're pissed off that he left. You're going to make him feel guilty for not sticking up for you in front of Mum when she was trying to send you home. You're going to have a blazing row about him sacrificing himself in the forest, and that's - that's the absolute last thing that Harry needs right now."

"Well don't you just have it all figured out?" asked Ginny after a pause that was just the sheerest of instants too long, and Harry knew that Ron had hit a nerve. There was at least _some_ truth to what he had said, and Ginny knew it. So she was mad at him. Great. "The brilliant chess-player who's always three moves ahead. Knows me better than I know myself. Go on then, tell me, what's it that I'm thinking right now?" She scowled ferociously, and Harry could feel the heat of her glare, even if he couldn't see it very well. There was no need for Legilimency, her thoughts were coming through loud and clear.

"Stop it, both of you," Harry said quietly, but there was no change in their demeanours, so he tried again. "Oi! Will the both of you come off it?" He winced once again as he raised his voice, and despite his best efforts to hide it, he knew that they could see that he was still labouring. But, on the bright side, it did stop the row in its tracks.

"Right then. I'll be back as soon as I can." Ron and Ginny shared a quick glance, then Ron turned and made for the door, shutting it softly behind him.

"I really am fine," insisted Harry, once he'd gone. It took him a moment to realize that Ginny was sitting on his bed in Gryffindor tower, and they had the whole dormitory to themselves. He'd had countless fantasies that started precisely like this. But the look that Ginny was giving him now was not typically the one she wore in such dreams, and neither was he usually unable to breathe deeply in them.

"Harry, please don't lie to me. I can tell that you've got a pain in your chest. It's blatantly obvious." Harry was silent for a moment, then used his hands to try and push his weight upward into a sitting position. He wasn't able to manage it, as the pain became unbearable very quickly, and he sank back down into the bed, defeated.

"I don't know what's wrong," he groaned. "I didn't have any of this pain before I fell asleep, and I don't really remember anything happening during the battle that would have caused this kind of-" but he broke off before finishing the thought, because he realized that it too would have been a lie, and Ginny was apparently already mad at him.

"So what was it?" Apparently, Ginny had picked up on his hesitation. Even after nine months apart, it was amazing - and a bit scary - how well she could read him. "A curse? A giant? One of those enormous spider things?" As she was listing possibilities, she swung a leg up and over Harry so that she was straddling him at mid-thigh, her knees pressing into either side of him.

"Those - those were Acro- Acromantulas." The warmth on his legs was incredibly distracting, and he felt his brain go as fuzzy as his vision. "W-what?" He hoped she'd be able to figure out what he was asking, since he found his mouth wasn't working particularly well either. She reached out both her hands and gestured for Harry to take them.

"You said you wanted to get up, so we'll get you up," she said simply. When Harry didn't move quickly enough for her liking, she bent forward slightly and grabbed his hands. "I expect this will be quite painful, but if it's what you want. On the count of three. Ready?" Harry nodded and steeled himself for the pain to come. It was a bit silly, attempting to get up now that Madam Pomfrey would be here in a little while, but he felt the overwhelming urge to be back on his feet. To not be as completely helpless as he was right now.

"Yeah, I'm ready."

"One, two, three!" She pulled back hard on Harry's hands, and Harry focused all his energy on using his stomach to sit up. It was, as Ginny had predicted, excruciating. But, perhaps because he was so malnourished and underweight, or perhaps because he was strengthened by her presence, after five seconds of groaning and cursing, he found himself sitting upright with Ginny in his lap panting slightly.

"Thank you," he said softly, suddenly aware of their proximity and rather compromising position.

"Are you feeling any better?" Ginny swept a strand of hair that had fallen loose during her struggle to help Harry back behind her ear, and he felt a lump form in his throat. The way she was framed in the late-afternoon sunlight pouring in through the windows, coupled with the slight fuzziness of her features that remained even at this short distance, was enough to briefly convince himself that maybe he was still asleep and in one of his fantasies after all. Merlin she was beautiful. "Harry?"

"Sorry, yes." He shook himself gently to clear his mind.

"Do you want to stand up? I think it will actually be easier since you'll be able to use your legs to help, and it-"

"Yes, I'd like to try it," he interrupted, "but right now I just want to sit here for a moment and -" _And look at you._ "- and catch my breath." That had been close. Truthfully, there was nothing he'd rather do than throw his arms out and wrap Ginny in a tight embrace, and then pull her down to the bed with him as they laughed. But it didn't seem like the sort of thing a person did to someone whose brother had just died.

The thought ran through Harry's mind before he could stop it, and he could feel the smile that had been playing at the corners of his mouth morph into a frown. Ginny, who was studying his face intently, brought a hand up to point at his mouth. "What's that for?"

"I just - I thought of Fred."

"Oh." Ginny dropped her hand, and Harry felt some of the life run out of her.

"I'm sorry." He reached up to put a hand on her shoulder, and the motion made his chest twinge.

"Me too," Ginny admitted, reaching up to place a hand over Harry's.

"Do you want to talk about it?" Harry wasn't sure why he asked. He hadn't intended to, and talking about Fred certainly wasn't the direction he'd been hoping that their time alone would take, but it seemed - well, it seemed like the sort of thing you'd offer to do for a person you cared about. And Ginny was certainly that.

"I don't know," she shrugged, and she and Harry both withdrew their hands. "On the one hand it feels like it's the only thing I'll ever be talking about again, but - but on the other it still hasn't really sunk in yet, you know? It just doesn't feel real. Like I could walk out the door and back down to the common room and he'd be there waiting with some hilarious joke."

"I'm pretty sure that Hermione would say that right now you're in denial."

"I very well could be, but with all due respect to Hermione, I'm not currently straddling _her_ in bed. If I wanted to know what she thought, I'd talk to her. In fact, I have talked to her. But I haven't talked to you Harry. I want to know what _you_ think. But so far you've been avoiding me, and right now, that - well that pain seems much more real to me."

Harry's first instinct was to deny it, but once again he knew that it would be a lie. Was that who he was now? Was his first instinct for self-preservation always going to be to lie? Was that to be Albus Dumbledore's most lasting legacy to him?

"See, you're still ignoring me," said Ginny with what Harry thought must be an eye roll. He really did need to get his glasses on. "Where did you go just there? Where are you escaping to?"

"I wasn't escaping, I was thinking about - about all the lies I've told."

"Were you trying to remember a particularly good one to feed to me?"

"Not hardly." He expected to feel his ire rise at the accusation, but found that there wasn't any to be had. Ginny had every right to be upset with him. He _had_ been avoiding her. "I was trying to prevent myself from telling yet another one, actually. I've been telling them for so long now that it's just sort of - second nature at this point."

"I suppose I can understand that. I've told a hell of a lot of lies too, since I last saw you. 'No, I swear that Harry Potter wasn't at the wedding.' 'No, Professor Carrow, I am not now, nor have I ever been Harry Potter's girlfriend.' 'No, Professor Carrow, I have no idea how that Dumbledore's Army recruiting poster wound up on the wall.'" She smiled wryly. "I thought I was a very good liar, but no one ever seemed to believe any of those for some reason."

"Did they hurt you?" The question was quiet, barely audible even to himself. He half hoped that Ginny hadn't heard, and that he could go on not knowing the specifics of what had transpired at Hogwarts under Snape. So he could go on without the added guilt of having caused the girl who inhabited his dreams pain that he hadn't been able to protect her from.

"Yes," she answered frankly. And Harry was at once relieved and frightened. Relieved that here at last was someone not treating him with kid gloves, someone not afraid that he'd break even further at the mention of bad news. Frightened that he'd break further. "And I'll admit I got some of the worst of it because of who I was, but they never did anything that wouldn't heal. They always pushed right up to the brink, but then usually Snape would step in and remind them of how it would look if a pure-blood - even a blood traitor - was brutally injured.

"Brutally?" choked Harry, causing a spasm in his chest that caused him to bring his hand up to his heart reflexively. Ginny just shrugged nonchalantly.

"You ready to try standing up?"

"Brutally," he repeated, not willing to let it slide that easily. "Ginny, if they-"

"They didn't. Look, you may not believe me, but if I'm going to expect the truth from you, I've no right to lie."

"You just said yourself that you were a very good liar."

"I did at that." Their eyes locked, and in that moment Harry knew that he could have no secrets from this girl, and that she'd have none from him. Even if he wanted to - and he didn't - she could just see right through him.

"I'm sorry," he whispered. He broke the eye contact to look down, but then found that he was looking at her chest instead, which, while quite nice, didn't exactly feel appropriate. He wound up turning to look toward the window instead. "That I was ignoring you," he added, sensing her question. "There's a lot of things that I'm - I'm trying to figure out right now. I've had one real purpose for so long now, and I'm not really sure who I am without that hanging over me."

"You're Harry Potter."

"I am, yes. But I'm not the same Harry Potter that I was yesterday, and I feel almost like I'm - like I'm starting over. I haven't really thought about what I'd do with myself if today ever came. I think that I expected-"

"To die," supplied Ginny after a moment, and Harry nodded gravely. "Well I, for one, am pleased that that didn't happen. The Boy-Who-Died doesn't have quite the same ring to it."

"Right," agreed Harry for want of something better to say. He wanted to tell Ginny what had really happened in the woods - make her understand that his identity questions were more deeply rooted than simply outliving his purpose. But now was not the time. "Let's get me on my feet." Ginny nodded and rolled off of Harry, pulling the sheets of the bed down off his legs as she did so. She stood, turned to face him, and held out her hands to help him up, once he'd gingerly rotated so that his feet were hanging over the side of the bed.

Ginny had been right, it was significantly easier going from sitting down to standing up, and now that he was vertical, there was very little pain in his chest at all. Unless, of course, he made a sudden move, bent forward at the waist or raised his left arm any higher than shoulder height. All right, very little pain may have been an exaggeration, but it was still an improvement. He grabbed his glasses off the bedside table and his wand out from under his pillow. He spun it absent-mindedly in his hand before stuffing it gingerly into his pocket. It was amazing how quickly the memory of its weight and balance had returned to him.

"Do you want to go wait in the common room?" Ginny was still standing at the side of the bed where she'd helped Harry up, and now that he could see her clearly, it was obvious how much of a toll the last twenty-four hours had had on her. There were dark circles underneath her red-rimmed eyes, and her usually immaculate hair was tangled and unruly.

"No, I don't fancy having an audience just yet, if that's all right. I do think I should use the loo, however."

"You don't need me to help you up off the pot or anything like that, do you?" she asked with a smirk. "I mean I would and all, but since you don't fancy an audience-"

"No no, that won't be necessary, but if I fall in, I'll be sure to give a shout."

"If you do, say 'Hi' to Myrtle for me. I've not seen her in a few months. I kinda miss-" Ginny broke off suddenly, and Harry glanced at her, puzzled. She looked to be deep in thought, and as he watched, a hopeful gleam began to light her eyes. With a sickening realization, understanding washed over him. He was going to have to break her heart.

"He's not a ghost, Ginny."

"You can't know that!" Her shout was very nearly angry in its desperation, and Harry flinched at it.

"I - I once thought the same thing could be true of - of Sirius." He debated crossing the distance to her as he spoke - he really wanted to give her a long overdue hug - but he wasn't sure his injured chest would allow him to do so, so he stayed put and tried his best to look sympathetic.

"But you don't _know_ , Harry," she insisted, and he was disconcerted to see a tear wend its way down her cheek and disappear beneath the curve of her jaw. "I don't know how it works, but what if-"

"He'll have gone on."

"On to where?"

"That I - I don't know. I just know that he'll have chosen to go there. He died happy, Ginny. His life was fantastic and full. There was nothing left to keep him here."

"But I'm here! George is here! He can't - he wouldn't have just left us like that. He couldn't have been that selfish!"

"It's because you _are_ here that he had to go on - no, listen" he chided, when she tried to interrupt, "He would have been stuck watching as everyone he loved grew old and eventually died. Your mum and dad, you and your brothers, all his friends, one by one he'd have to say goodbye. And then he'd have been stuck here with no one but Peeves, because everyone will have moved on without him.

"It sounds like you think that I'm the one being selfish!" she cried, throwing her hands about randomly as she did so. Harry could tell she was getting too worked up, and he decided that perhaps he'd been too patronizing. Maybe sympathy would play better.

"Absolutely not. Just human. I've been where you are right now. And it sucks. It's going to get worse, too. Because that denial doesn't last forever."

"I am not in bloody denial!" Right, so not sympathy then. How about humour?

"No, you're right, you've clearly moved on to anger." Ginny stilled immediately, and folded her hands over her chest, and Harry knew instantly that humour hadn't worked either. "I'm sorry, Ginny, I-"

"Go to the bathroom, Harry," she sighed, slumping heavily back onto the bed.

"Ginny-"

"Not now." Harry didn't know very much about girls, but he felt fairly certain that any further attempts to apologize would only make the situation worse, so he turned and silently padded into the bathroom.

Where had he gone wrong? Sure, it hadn't exactly been the romantic and passionate reunion he'd been dreaming about for the last three-quarters of a year, but it had been going all right, hadn't it? He'd only been trying to help her cope with the loss of her brother, and then she'd just - well, she'd gotten upset. Which, he reminded himself, she had every right to be.

These thoughts swam through his head as he relieved himself, and it wasn't until he saw himself in the mirror over the sink as he washed his hands, that he was able to focus on something else. Now that he was finally able to get a good look at himself, it was shocking how much of a mess he was.

His hands immediately flew up to his hair, which was filthy and matted down with something quite sticky that he hoped wasn't blood. But then, considering what some of the alternatives were, perhaps blood might not be so bad. The spatters along the front of his shirt were definitely blood though, and he shuddered as he struggled to remember where it had come from. Whose blood was it? Some random Death Eater's? Or had it belonged to one of his friends? Lavender or Seamus? Luna or Ernie?

The longer he stood there and took stock of his appearance, the more desperate he became to get clean. His pants were easy enough. He undid his belt and kicked out of them, but his shirt was a good deal trickier. He tried to remove it normally, but found that his left arm's reduced range of motion meant that he couldn't just yank it off.

As he considered his options, he began to grow fearful of what he might find underneath. He had no idea what was causing him so much pain, but instinctively he believed that it must be a side effect of Riddle's killing curse. His eyes flicked up to his forehead in the mirror, and then they traced the familiar jagged path of his scar - the only remaining souvenir from his first run in with He-who-had-been-named-Tom-Riddle.

Because that was true, now, wasn't it? The prophecy had run its course. He was no longer 'The Chosen One,' just the one that Riddle had chosen. And his mother's protection - that shining beacon of self-sacrifice had died along with Voldemort, hadn't it? And - and the bit of - of soul.

For the first time in his life, he was - as he had insisted to Hagrid all those years ago - just Harry.

It was terrifying.

And he felt so very very alone.

His parents, Sirius, Lupin and Dumbledore were all dead. The Dursleys were - well, they were the Dursleys. Mr. And Mrs. Weasley were perfectly wonderful of course, but he could hardly bother them with his existential crisis when they themselves were grieving the loss of a son. Ron and Hermione at least knew that something had changed, but they were looking at him - and treating him - like he'd grown a second head. Ginny - well, he had no idea what to make of Ginny. She'd seemed willing to at least listen, but then he'd gone and mucked it up.

He supposed he could talk to Luna, but then quickly dismissed the idea, as she'd no doubt ascribe his condition to some invisible doodad or a conspiracy of some sort. No, he needed sanity right now, and as much as he appreciated Luna's friendship, she wasn't someone who could offer that.

Still trying to make sense of it all, he withdrew his right arm from its sleeve, then lifted the collar up and over his head, before letting the shirt drop down his left arm to the floor. He raised his eyes slowly up to the mirror in trepidation to take inventory of his injuries.

There was nothing there. Sure, the locket shaped scar over his breastbone was still present and accounted for, and there were a couple of minor scrapes and some bruising on his side, but there was absolutely no mark indicating that he'd been hit once again by the Killing Curse. No lightning bolt cut, no gaping hollow where Tom Riddle's soul had been carved out of him.

He walked over to the claw footed tub along the far wall of the bathroom and turned on the tap and pulled the diverter chain for the shower. What did it mean? Why had he wound up scarred for life the first time he'd survived an Avada Kedavra, and then come away a second time unblemished? He supposed it was a question he'd have to put to Hermione. No doubt she'd be pleased to have something to research again.

His thoughts had given the water time to warm up, so he gingerly stepped over the side of the tub and drew the curtain closed around him. He stood still for several minutes with his eyes closed, leaning into the hot water raining down on him. It felt great to feel bits and pieces of the accumulated dirt and grime of battle slough off, and he imagined them disappearing down the drain and washing out to sea, getting swept about by tides and currents until they wound up on the shores of a little island - nothing more than a rock really - with a little lopsided shack upon it.

That was where Harry had been re-born the last time. He had been an undersized, malnourished, unloved afterthought before Hagrid had whisked him away to a world beyond any he could've dreamt of. A place where he mattered. Actually, now that Harry thought about it, Hagrid had been there for his re-birth tonight too, hadn't he? And when his parents-

"Harry, are you decent?" Ginny's voice cut through the steam that was rising around him, and Harry was momentarily confused about where he was. He'd been lost in his own head there for a minute, and he'd been on the brink of coming to a realization too. He closed his eyes to try and re-start his train of thought, but it was no use. It had departed the station.

"Harry?" There was a hint of worry in Ginny's voice now.

"Not really decent, no," he said loudly. He heard the door to the bathroom click shut over the sound of the water cascading around him, and he assumed that Ginny had left, so he gave a little start when her voice came again from closer to the tub.

"Harry, I'm sorry."

"Ginny, what in Merlin's name-"

"Come off it Harry, I've got six broth-" she cut off suddenly and then sighed before correcting herself. "Had. _Had_ six brothers, and Harry, you don't have anything I haven't seen before."

"All right, first, just because he's dead doesn't mean he's gone, and second, just because you may be comfortable with seeing me, that doesn't make me comfortable being seen!" Harry protested. He stared intently at the shower curtain surrounding him, trying to make out any objects visible on the other side, but breathed a little easier when he realized he couldn't actually see anything. To his immense surprise and relief, Ginny laughed.

"Wow, Harry, you spend so much time with Hermione in a tent that you start talking like her, and yet you're still bashful? I guess I _really_ needn't have worried myself."

"You were - worried?"

"Well not about that, but hell yes I was worried! My best friend, my brother and -" Harry's breathing paused as Ginny apparently searched for the right word to describe what he was to her. Ex-boyfriend, Quidditch captain, speccy git, the boy I love - he tried to guess which direction she was going to go in, but as always Ginny threw him for a loop. "And you -" Harry rolled his eyes - "you just take up and leave to take the fight to You-Know-Who, and -"

"Tom Riddle," corrected Harry automatically. He'd made a conscious decision to use Riddle's given name as much as possible in an attempt to poke holes in the mythos surrounding him. Ginny remained silent, and after a moment of waiting for her to resume her thought, Harry pulled back the shower curtain slightly so he could peer around it at her.

She was leaning heavily up against the sink, with one hand on either side of it supporting her. Her head hung down, and her hair spilled in front of her face, so Harry couldn't see it, even in the mirror. Not that he'd have been able to make anything out at this distance without his glasses.

"There's a name I never wanted to hear again," she said softly. Harry swore at himself silently. The body diary. He'd once again forgotten all the history Ginny had with it - with him - and now he'd gone and dredged up terrible memories for her.

He was on the verge of apologizing, when a new thought struck him. A horrible thought. He remembered Riddle standing over him in the Chamber of Secrets describing how Ginny had bared her soul to him. How she had been drawn to him because he could offer her something that no one else would. But what if - what if Ginny had never stopped being drawn to Tom Riddle? What if it was only the bit of Riddle's soul that had resided in Harry that had made her feel as she had? Or perhaps even worse, what would she think when she found out that he'd had a piece of Riddle in him the whole time?

The thought made him shiver in spite of the hot water and steam that surrounded him, and he snapped the curtain back shut. "I'm sorry Ginny, I didn't mean to-"

"No, Harry. It isn't your fault. It's just a name. And Tom is just a memory, thanks to you. That's two monsters that you've vanquished for me now."

"Well you were hardly a damsel in distress here this second time. You were fighting right alongside of me." Harry bent at the knees to turn off the water, trying to keep from aggravating his chest injury. The heat had seemed to help though, and he didn't feel much pain as he straightened back up. "Hey, could you grab me a towel?"

A moment later, a towel was tossed up and over the bar supporting the shower curtain, and Harry grabbed it thankfully. Then he realised that it had slid off the bar far too easily, and weighed far less than it should. Confused, he held it up in front of himself. Ginny had given him the hand towel that had been next to the sink. He smiled in spite of himself.

"Very funny, Ginny. Now how about a regular one."

"You're such a spoilsport," she huffed, but he could tell that she was smiling. A second - much larger - towel was slung up over the bar, and Harry reached up with his right hand to grab it. But as he pulled, he found that the towel wouldn't budge. Thinking that it must be caught on something, he gave it a stronger tug, grimacing as he did so.

The rod that the shower curtain hung on gave out, and it clattered to the floor, leaving Harry looking right at Ginny who was holding the other end of the towel. "Such shoddy construction," she remarked casually, looking him in the eye. Her cheeks were just the slightest shade of pink, but she was grinning broadly. Harry used the hand towel he still held in his left hand to cover himself as best he could, and found himself grinning back.

They stayed that way for a few seconds, and Harry was just getting the urge to lean forward over the edge of the tub and kiss her when the door to the bathroom burst open. "Harry!" cried Ron as he ran through the door. "Is everything all right, we heard-" he stopped short when he saw the two of them standing as they were, and unlike it had been in Ginny's face, the colour that rose in his cheeks was obvious.

"Hello Ron, that took longer than we were expecting." Ginny's voice was calm and friendly, but Harry thought he could just detect a hint of a warning in it as well.

"Yes well, Pomfrey there," Ron indicated the school's matron, who was just now sidling through the bathroom door toting a large brown leather satchel, "insisted on giving me a thorough examination before we left the Hospital Wing."

"Mr. Weasley, we've been through this. My records indicate that you've been sick with Spattergoit for months now, and I couldn't just let you run around the school potentially infecting other individuals!" Madam Pomfrey carefully set her bag on the floor, and glanced around the room. "Are we interrupting something?" she asked, raising an eyebrow.

"No no, I was just leaving," said Ginny breezily as she dropped her side of the towel. She gave Harry a wink, then turned and walked agonizingly slowly to the door. Ron stood silently and stewed as he watched her go, finally turning to Harry once the door had closed behind her.

"Harry, what the-"

"Mr. Weasley, you need to leave too," interrupted Madam Pomfrey. Ron looked like he wanted to protest, but thought better of it and retreated out the door as well. Once it had closed, Harry heard him start shouting at Ginny, though the actual words weren't recognizable.

"Bloody hell," muttered Madam Pomfrey, surprising Harry. He'd never known her to curse before, and he'd certainly spent enough time in the Hospital Wing to know her rather well. She withdrew her wand from a pocket in her apron - an apron Harry was just now noticing was quite bloody - and cast a silencing charm on the door.

"Sorry about them," shrugged Harry. But the movement made him uncomfortably aware of how little of him was covered, and he hurriedly wrapped the larger towel around himself as Pomfrey bent over and fiddled with her bag. She straightened up after he'd made sure he was all tucked in, and Harry realized that she hadn't actually retrieved anything from the bag and had most likely just been giving him some privacy.

"So, Mr. Potter," she began, striding briskly to the tub, and immediately reaching out to press a hand against his right side just down from his armpit. Harry winced at her touch. "You've got some broken ribs."

Harry nodded, relieved. It made sense. His body had been slammed into the ground rather hard a number of times when Riddle had been tossing him about with the Cruciatus Curse after his - death? Was death the right word? "Is it something you can fix?" he asked. Madam Pomfrey harrumphed indignantly by way of reply, then jabbed her wand into Harry's side.

" _Costa Emendo."_ Harry felt something shift in his chest, and all the pain he had been feeling disappeared. "Breathe deeply for me, if you would," instructed Madam Pomfrey. Harry did so, and the tightness in his chest that had prevented him from filling his lungs since he had woken up never materialized. He let it back out slowly, savouring the feeling of his expanded chest cavity.

"Thanks."

"What else?"

"What else?" parroted Harry, dumbly. He didn't understand.

"Yes, Mr. Potter, what else? What are your other injuries or afflictions?"

"I - uh - have a bit of a headache?" He felt silly mentioning it, but she _had_ asked.

"A headache?" Madam Pomfrey narrowed her eyes and squinted at him. "You expect me to believe that the most accident prone child I've ever encountered - one who had just spent nine months running for his life - who, in the last twenty-four hours, fights in a full scale battle against Death Eaters, giants, Acromantulas and Merlin knows what else, somehow fools You-Know-Who into thinking he's dead, and then duels the most dangerous wizard ever - to the _death_ \- and he somehow manages to walk away with a few broken ribs and a headache?"

"Umm - I got lucky, I guess?" offered Harry, apologetically.

"Lucky?" Harry nodded earnestly, hoping that she'd just drop the subject. Pomfrey stared at him for a long moment, but then her frosty demeanour wavered. She pointed her wand at his head and gave it a slight twist. Once again all his pain disappeared. Madam Pomfrey looked like she was about to walk away, but then she apparently thought better of it. "I'm sorry - I know I don't usually ask these sorts of questions, but I just have to know; How did you fool him into thinking you were dead?"

"I - well, I -" Harry's mind raced as he tried to fabricate a plausible lie in his head. He suspected that she wouldn't believe him if he said that he'd just fallen over and played opossum.

"Was it a Draught of Living Death? Because I've seen just now how effective that can be."

"Yes!" agreed Harry a little too eagerly as he latched onto the lifeline he'd been given. "That's absolutely what it was. We - we had brewed it in our - first Potions class of sixth year, and -"

"And you thought it might be useful," continued Madam Pomfrey nodding her head slightly. "And the antidote?"

"A - um - a bezoar?" he tried, grasping at his one solid point of reference on antidotes. To his relief, Pomfrey smiled.

"While that would work, Mr. Potter, I expect people will be more willing to swallow Wiggenweld Potion, should anyone else ask. No pun intended, of course." She turned on her heels and strode back to her satchel, which she bent over to pick up. Harry gaped at her back.

"I don't ask questions, Mr. Potter. Others will. You need to be prepared before you have to answer them."

"Thank you Madam Pomfrey, I really appreciate your help. All of it, really. I can't even count the number of times you've healed me now."

"You know how you can thank me?" she asked, turning back around to look him in the eye. "Stay the hell away from Hogwarts until I retire. I don't have another day like today in me." She smiled grimly at him, and Harry returned it. "Now you'd best put some clothes on and try to keep your friends from killing each other."

She opened the door to the bathroom, and instantly the room was filled with the echoes of Ron and Ginny having a blazing row in the dormitory. Harry grimaced yet again, but this time it wasn't from the pain.

* * *

 **Author's Notes:** Thanks again to everyone who has been reading and reviewing. It's always great to hear from people who are taking the time to share in something that I hold so dear. But I have realized that I've not been holding up my end of the bargain. I apologize for not responding to all my reviews, that's a very nasty habit to have fallen into, and one I'll look to rectify right after I post this chapter. You deserve more than just a quick blanket thank you in the author's notes.

This fic has been very low on action so far, and I apologize for that. I'm thinking it might be time for something to actually happen though, so – fingers crossed – next chapter we might get something (anything!) accomplished.

So thanks again, I hope you enjoyed this chapter, and I hope to see you next time! If I don't get the next chapter out by Christmas, have a Merry one!


	6. Reclamation

**Disclaimer:** Does anyone read these things? I feel like no one reads these things.

* * *

 **Chapter Six**

 **Reclamation**

* * *

"Dad, it's time." The voice was measured but insistent, and Arthur Weasley wearily lifted his head from his hands to see his son Bill standing before him. "She'll be all right. Fleur will take good care of her, I promise." Arthur looked back over his shoulder to where his wife lay limply on one of the beds in - Merlin, it didn't matter, did it? It didn't matter where they were, because it wasn't home.

Molly's eyes were open, but she was staring blankly at a spot on the wall where some Gryffindor girl had hung a poster of a beach. Rolling surf pounded ceaselessly at the white sand, and a pair of palm trees swayed gently off to the side. A perfect place to escape to. Doubtless it had come in handy during this year-from-hell at Hogwarts, and it had managed to calm his wife down after another bout of hysterics that had struck once she'd woken from a fitful kip. But she hadn't moved in nearly ten minutes now, save for the rhythmic rise and fall of her chest, and Arthur was beginning to grow worried.

Before she'd slept, she'd seemed - well not normal, no, normal was past-tense now - but she'd been there. Present. She'd been recognizably the woman he loved. There were tears and sorrow, sure, but they were going to get through it because she was Molly and he was Arthur, and that was enough. But then he'd watched her tossing about in her sleep - heard her call out to a son that couldn't hear - and whatever infinitesimal hope he'd been clinging to that the worst was behind them had evaporated.

"I don't know that it's the right time, Bill," he said with a heavy sigh. Molly didn't stir at the sound of his voice, as he had been hoping she might, instead just continuing to stare off into the beautiful eternity of Anguilla, wherever that was. He reached back with a hand to give her ankle an encouraging pat, but this too had no effect. "Mightn't it be better to wait for a time when your Mother is - more - more herself?"

"Ideally, yes," allowed Bill, and Arthur could tell that he was choosing his words carefully so as not to offend. "But we can't stay at Hogwarts forever, and if I know Aunt Muriel - well, she's not exactly the most tactful individual. I can only imagine the sorts of horrible things she'd say about -" Bill swallowed the end of his sentence, but Arthur knew he'd been about to say 'Fred.' His name was on the tips of all their tongues, yet no one was willing to say it in Molly's presence.

"No, definitely not Muriel's." That would be an unmitigated disaster.

"You know that anyone is welcome at Shell Cottage, but we don't have enough room for everyone." Arthur shook his head at the suggestion and turned back to look at Bill.

"The Burrow is our home, we'll return there. I just can't leave her like this. What if she has another breakdown? I don't know that Fleur will be able to -"

"To what?" The question was posed by Fleur herself, who had apparently been standing just outside the doorway awaiting her opportunity to join the conversation. But she had the good grace not to actually expect Arthur to answer her brusque question, and she looked sympathetically at him as she entered the room. He watched as her eyes roved back from where he sat at the end of the bed, and saw them darken when they took in Molly's state. The smile that followed was thin and forced. "Molly will be well cared for, of zat you can rest assured." When she reached Bill, she wove an arm under his and used this new connection to leverage herself closely up against him.

"Fleur, I didn't mean to question your ability to comfort my wife."

"Bien!" she said a bit too brightly, "then it 'as been settled. You and Bill will go to ze 'ouse to get it ready, and Molly and I will get ze rest of ze family ready 'ere at 'Ogwarts." Arthur sincerely doubted his wife would be doing any such thing, but he was grateful to Fleur for including her, knowing that Molly was listening somewhere inside the veil of grief that covered her. But he shook his head. He couldn't leave her. Why did they not understand that?

"Bill, why don't you go alone? I'm sure that you're capable of handling it."

"The number one rule of Curse-Breaking is 'never enter a potential hot zone without a second.' You're my second, Dad." Arthur grimaced at his son's characterization of the family homestead as a 'potential hot zone,' but he knew that he was right. There had been no protection over the Burrow since Easter, and it seemed likely that Death Eaters would have paid it a visit to try and learn something of Harry's whereabouts.

"One of your brothers?"

"No, it needs to be you." Bill's voice was once again gently insistent, and Arthur found himself wondering why that tone sounded so familiar. "George is right out, and neither Charlie or Percy has called the Burrow home in years. I need someone who's intimately familiar with its contents so that we can spot things that are out of place or missing."

"Ron, then?" Bill and Fleur shared a worried look, during which an entire conversation took place. Arthur knew looks like that very well indeed, he'd been on the receiving end of a fair few from Molly during his time. And with a jolt that caused him to stiffen slightly, he realized why Bill's tone and mannerisms were so familiar. They were his own. Bill had grown to be like him. Take away the earring and the ponytail, the exotic job and the leather jacket, and he was just a family man at heart, struggling to make sense of a world that had ceased to.

"Ron needs to cool down a bit at the moment," Bill said, apparently having won his silent argument with Fleur. "He and Ginny had something of an -"

"Em-broo-eel? This is how you say it in Eenglish, yes?" Fleur looked up at her husband for confirmation, but it took him a moment to puzzle out the word she'd used. After a few beats his eyes lit up, and he shook his head slightly.

"Imbroglio," he corrected, "I _think_ it's derived from embrouille, but that's a bit fancy for what we're dealing with. I think most English speakers would just call it a row or a fight. Maybe a quarrel if they wanted to spice it up a bit."

"Pah," spat Fleur with false cheer, "You Eenglish with your simple monosyllabic vocabularies." She gave Bill's arm a swat with her free hand, and Arthur saw his son's lips briefly turn upward at the edges before quickly folding back into a frown.

"Still, I think those two need some time to sort it out. Come on Dad, it won't take that long, and with luck, you and Mum can spend tonight in your own bed."

"You would like zat, would you not, Molly?" asked Fleur, letting go of Bill's arm and moving around the bed to sit next to the Weasley matriarch. There was no sign that she'd heard, and she continued to stare at the poster on the wall. No, Arthur realized, that wasn't it. She was staring _through_ the poster, wasn't she?

Arthur felt a hand on his shoulder, and before he knew what he was doing, he was on his feet. He hadn't intended to stand up - had thought only of remaining on that bed with Molly, where he was needed the most right now. But here he was following Bill down the stairs. Had he subconsciously wanted to get away? Was he that weak? Was Molly's struggle weighing on him so heavily that he needed time away to breathe on his own? The questions swam through his head as he descended.

The Common Room was not as empty as Arthur had been expecting. Ron and Ginny were sitting in opposite corners, pointedly not looking at each other, and Harry was seated in a chair across from Neville Longbottom. The two were talking animatedly, and Harry was looking rather more pleased than he had in quite some time. Arthur caught Harry's eye and nodded at him mechanically as he stepped off of the staircase, and whatever happiness had been lurking at the edges of Harry's face ebbed away. He put his arms on the arms of the chair as though to get up, but Arthur waved him off quickly.

"Sit, sit. I'm sure that you and Mr. Longbottom there have plenty to catch up on." Neville swung around in his chair, and his face similarly fell when he spotted Arthur. That was getting very old, very fast.

"Mr. Weasley, I'm sorry about Fred," he offered, sounding so much unlike the roaring lion he'd been when faced with Voldemort's imminent victory, that were it not for the ruby-studded sword leaning up against the side of his chair, Arthur would have begun to doubt that they were the same boy.

"Thank you Neville, that's very kind." The response was automatic, and Arthur cringed inwardly at the sound of it. Was that his voice? Why was he so disconnected from everything? Had losing Fred cost him a vital bit of himself that he couldn't get back?

"Hey, Bill!" Ron had called out to his older brother, who had been picking his way through the jumble of chairs, tables and couches towards the portrait hole. As Arthur watched, Ron jumped up from his chair and caught up with Bill, glancing in Arthur's direction as though ensuring that he was far enough away so as not to overhear. Not wanting to intrude, Arthur hung back to give them space, and inadvertently found himself listening in on Harry and Neville as they resumed their conversation.

"- mean, I knew what it was, we'd seen it when we tried to steal it from Snape's office back in the fall. But I never thought that - I mean, I wasn't -"

"I knew I had made the right choice, Neville," said Harry earnestly.

"You nearly gave me a heart attack Harry. Next time you want to ask me a favour, could you maybe leave out the whole giant snake, Dark Lord and getting set on fire bits?"

"Hey, you managed that last one all on your own. I'm pretty sure I never set immolation as a requirement. I think you were just trying to up the degree of difficulty."

"Honestly, I'm not sure _what_ I was thinking. The whole sequence is a bit of a blur. I remember standing there and thinking that you were a giant prat and that you had just died for nothing because there was no bloody way that I could kill that snake, and then my feet just sort of took over because I had to - I owed it to you - to try."

The two boys fell silent, and Arthur, who had been leaning up against the mantle examining a dusty carving of an owl while trying not to listen, re-centred himself above his feet and turned back toward the room. He wondered what it was Bill and Ron were discussing. They had their heads bowed low, and it looked like Bill was shaking his head repeatedly about something. But at least it seemed as though Ron had cooled off a bit from what apparently had been a rather nasty fight with Ginny.

At the thought of his youngest, he shifted his gaze, and was disconcerted to find her looking at him worriedly. Had she been watching him the whole time? Could she sense that something was amiss within him, the same way Hermione had known what his ultimate question was, before he had known himself?

"Are you ready, Dad?" Bill's question brought him back to his senses, and he nodded shortly before hurrying over to where Ron and Bill still stood.

* * *

Five minutes after clambering stiffly out of the portrait hole, Arthur was walking down the long path to the main gate of Hogwarts, Bill loping along easily beside him. The pair had been mostly silent as they had traversed the ruined corridors of the school. The rounding of every corner had laid before them a new scene of the battle's devastation - pools of blood, smashed windows and statues, scorch marks and piles of stones and other debris - the scars of a battle and fifty-odd tragic ends. It was suffocating, and he had to get Molly out of there.

 _And George._

Sweet Merlin, he'd forgotten all about George! He'd have it just as rough as Molly, if not even worse, and Arthur had nigh on ignored him. What sort of a terrible father was he? He stopped suddenly, gripped by an urgent need to see his son. To - to make sure. Just to make sure. It took Bill a few paces to realize that his companion wasn't beside him any longer.

"Dad?" He slowed to a halt and turned to face his father. Arthur was unsurprised to see a worried look plastered across his face. It seemed to be the only way anyone could look at him any more. As if he were going to shatter at any moment.

"I have to go back."

"Fleur will-"

"No, not Molly," Arthur interjected, slightly more irritably than he'd intended. "I need to see George. I need to - I need to see George," he repeated. Unbidden, a memory flashed across his mind like a bolt of lightning; a very green seven-year-old George snuggled up against him in the sitting room of the Burrow crying out his frustrations about having Dragon Pox. But then Fred was there. Because where George was, Fred was. And he was holding the soiled bed linens from George's bed that Molly had taken off to wash. Arthur had tried to get there in time, but before he could even set George aside, Fred had rubbed the sheets all over himself.

 _There George! Now we can be identical again!_

"Charlie and Percy are with him." Bill was right in front of him now, having apparently covered the short distance between them while Arthur had been caught up in his memory. "They have - they've orders not to - to leave him alone. Not that they needed to be ordered, mind."

"Good. That's good." Arthur found his breathing a bit easier knowing that at least someone was thinking clearly. Bill had taken care of it. Had done his job.

 _My job._

There was a hand on his shoulder again, urging him onward. What was it about someone else's touch that always spurred him into action? Some sort of impulse imparted through the fingertips? Perhaps a wizard's hand was like a Muggle plug, and it charged him with ec-lectricity. Or perhaps it was just deeper magic than he was familiar with, that of human connection. Without that input from others would he lose what it meant to be human? Was George losing it right now? And would he ever be able to answer any of the hundreds of questions he'd asked himself since Fred had died? Were there _no_ answers any more?

The path grew rougher the further they got from the castle. Large depressions in the earth left by marauding giants, the corpses of a Thestral and those overgrown spiders, and a massive debris field of what looked like the bits and pieces of every suit of armour Hogwarts had housed, combined to distract Arthur from his troubled conscience. Picking his way through scattered pauldrons and visors demanded so much of his attention in fact, that he was surprised when they made it to the main gate.

The winged boars that stood sentinel at either side of the gate still stood, but an additional gatekeeper was currently on duty. A rather large one, at that. Rubeus Hagrid, looking quite exasperated, stood just inside the iron bars of the closed gate. About the other side of the gate a sizeable throng of witches and wizards jostled for position, each of them clamouring for his attention. As they approached, Arthur attempted to pick out individual voices from the crowd.

"Hagrid, is it true that Harry Potter is still at Hogwarts?"

"Can you confirm that under-age wizards were allowed to fight in the battle?"

"With the rumours stating that Hogwarts will be closing, are you fearful of losing your job?"

"Where is You-Know-Who's body?"

"What was the first meal Harry Potter ate after vanquishing the Dark Lord?"

"Merlin," whispered Bill from close beside him, "can you imagine what they'd do to Harry if they could get their hands on him?" Arthur didn't respond. It wouldn't be pretty, that much was certain.

"Would yeh ruddy lot listen ter me?" Hagrid, his face flushed, had raised his arms in frustration, and their long shadows fell across the group of reporters surrounding him and caused them to fall silent. "I'm no' allowed ter make statements, an' I wouldn' be tellin' nothin' ter the likes o' you vultures anyway.

"But Hagrid, you know that-"

"I know tha' it's my job ter keep yeh from pokin' yer noses in where they aren' welcome."

"But the world needs to know!"

"Needs ter know wha' Harry had fer lunch today? Needs ter know who his girlfriend is? What colour jumper he was wearin' as he sacrificed hisself ter - ter -" Hagrid broke off, looking upset with himself. "No' that I'm sayin' he did sacrifice hisself, mind. Jus' that if he had, it wouldn'ta mattered wha' he was wearin'." All of the reporters started shouting at once, making it impossible to make out any of their individual questions, and Hagrid slowly shook his head before turning his back to the gate. But the scowl he wore on his face disappeared when he saw Bill and Arthur.

"Hello, Arthur!" he called, giving a friendly wave. "Wouldn'ta expected I'd be seein' yeh down here at the gate." He chuckled to himself lightly, and jerked a thumb back over his shoulder. "O' course now you're here, I could use a spot o' help with those duffers back there. "Give'em some Ministry double-speak or summat to keep'em quiet fer a bit."

Having expected yet another look of concern, or a similarly well-worn but well-intentioned 'sorry for your loss,' Arthur instead found himself grinning back at Hagrid. It was nice to feel wanted. To have some purpose beyond existing solely to feel empty.

"Good afternoon, Hagrid," he responded crisply, then, surprising himself, he walked directly up to the Keeper of the Keys and gave him a quick hug about the waist. "It's nice to see you back where you belong."

"And it's good ter be back!" Hagrid boomed, slapping Arthur affectionately on the shoulder. "It was gettin' a bi' cramped in the cave tha' Grawp and I were holed up in. And lemme tell yeh - the hut is goin'ta feel like a castle tonigh'."

"That's actually where we're headed right now," offered Bill as Arthur took a step back so as to not risk a cricked neck due to looking up at such a severe angle. "Our hut, as it were. We're off to set the Burrow to rights."

"Ah," breathed Hagrid, nodding sagely, "I figured it'd be summat like tha'. Don' let me keep yeh. I was jus' lookin' fer a bit o' advice on how ter handle the Blood-Sucking Bugbears."

"They do seem rather vicious just at the moment," agreed Bill, peering past Hagrid to where the reporters were still periodically shouting out questions half-heartedly. Largely though, they stood silent and aloof, jotting down notes with self-inking quills or riffling through stacks of parchment. "I assume that it's on McGonagall's orders that you're keeping the gate closed?"

"Well o' course. She's the Headmistress, isn' she? Or she will be, anyways. I 'spect the board'll wanna make it official. But yeah, she asked me ter keep all the reporters outta the grounds. Wants to give grievin' families some space. Harry too, I 'spect, seein' what sorta questions are bein' asked."

"Well, if you ever want to give them something to chew on," offered Arthur conspiratorially, "I have it on good authority that Harry's first meal after the battle was a ham sandwich. Molly m-made it herself." Merlin, why had he mentioned her? He'd been doing better. Focused on Hagrid and the series of tasks that lay in front of him, rather than what was behind him in the castle. But now he was back in that dormitory, sitting on the end of that bed, listening to her breathe and begging the Universe to bring her back to him.

"-ter hear tha' he's doin' all righ'," Hagrid was saying, when Arthur returned to the present. "He gave me a righ' scare there in the fores'. Thought - Thought I'd lost'im, I did."

"He came back," Arthur whispered, to no one in particular.

"He sure did," agreed Hagrid, seemingly oblivious to the change in Arthur's demeanour. "No' quite sure how he did it, either. One minute he comes walkin' righ' up to You-Know-Who - doesn' even pull his wand or nothin' - and the next he's on the ground no' movin'. So there I am, all-"

"No, stop." Arthur's voice wasn't a whisper this time. He'd seen Fred's dead body in his mind, not Harry's. Had that been the way of it? Fred was fine, and then the next moment he was on the ground not moving? The scene looped repeatedly inside his head, with Fred dropping like a sack of potatoes to the floor of the forest. But unlike Harry, he hadn't come back.

"It's not that, Hagrid," he heard Bill saying in the distance as Fred collapsed yet again. "It's been a rough day for us, what with losing Fred and all. I think it might be best if we just were on our way." Arthur felt the guiding hand return to his shoulder, but he shrugged it off. He couldn't leave now, Fred was about to come back. This was the time.

 _Come on Fred, get up!_

But this loop ended the same way. _Every_ loop ended the same way. Arthur shook his head to clear the disappointment, and found himself back in front of the gate. "Sorry about that," he said, though who he was apologizing to, and for what, he wasn't quite sure.

"Yeh sure yeh're all righ'?" The concern that Arthur had been pleased to see absent in Hagrid's face earlier, was certainly there now. "If yeh wan', I think I've got a flask here in one of my pockets." He began to pat down the front of his long brown overcoat. "Give yeh a swig of summat strong." He patted the pocket just below his right shoulder for a second time, and with a grunt of acknowledgement, pulled a very large flask wrapped in what looked to be dragonskin. He held it out for Arthur to take.

"Thank you Hagrid, but no. I-" Arthur broke off, realizing that he had no idea what he was going to say. Hagrid didn't seem to mind, and unscrewed the cap of the flask with a hand that dwarfed the cap so badly, it was a wonder he could grip it.

"Ter Fred Weasley," he said, lifting the flask skyward once he'd gotten the cap off. "Brave Gryffindor to the end." He lowered the flask to his mouth and took a gigantic swig and then wiped his lips with the back of his free hand.

"Oh Merlin, give it here, I'll drink to that." Hagrid chuckled softly, and handed over the flask. "To Fred." The liquid burned as it went down, and Arthur found that he couldn't keep himself from coughing as he passed the bottle back up to Hagrid.

"Yeah, it'll do tha' if yeh're not expectin' it. Bill, how's abou' it?"

"No thanks. Second rule of Curse-Breaking." Hagrid let out a low whistle.

"So yeh think it'll be tha' bad, do yeh?"

"The possibility exists, yes," allowed Bill. "But always prepare for the worst and hope for the best. I don't expect that any of the Death Eaters that they sent to look in on us Weasleys would have been capable of setting up anything too elaborate though. Just a bunch of poor Blood Traitors, we are. Probably would've just sent a couple of underlings."

"Well, I'll le' you ou' the gate, bu' when yeh come back, yeh'll need ter head ter the Ministry firs'. I understand tha' they've go' a Floo connection se' up to take family members and other folks directly inter the castle. Quicker and more secure. Helps to keep tha' lot ou', too." He jerked his thumb over his shoulder towards the reporters once again. Arthur had forgotten they were even there.

"Do you still want me to say something to them?" he asked, remembering how nice it had been to feel wanted, even if it hadn't lasted more than a minute. "I really wouldn't mind."

"Well, yeh'll probably need ter say summat, anyway. No way ter avoid'em once yeh're ou' of the gate. Shall we?" Arthur nodded, then glanced over at Bill who was frowning. His son wanted to say something, but either couldn't bring himself to do it in front of Hagrid, or couldn't think of a way to say it without upsetting his overly-sensitive father. Probably the latter.

There was no more conversation as Hagrid turned back towards the gate, and trudged the short distance to it. At his approach, the reporters as one began to jostle each other for better positions next to the bars, and the questions started flying once more. Arthur did his best to ignore them.

"All righ', listen up. I'm goin' ter open the gate up fer a momen'. You lot are goin' ter move back and allow these two ter exit. Then I'm goin' ter close the gate. Tha's all tha's goin' ter happen." Hagrid withdrew an immense key chain from somewhere inside his coat, then flipped through the keys searching for the right one. Large ornate skeletons, small silver lever locks with delicate filigree, and utilitarian bronze paracentrics flashed past Arthur's eyes so quickly that they nearly blurred together. "Ah, here we go!" Hagrid withdrew a decidedly mundane lever lock key from amongst its brethren, and inserted it almost reverentially into the lock that sat at the centre of the gate. There was a piercing mechanical click, and the gate swung outward, several reporters having to scramble to avoid getting swept aside.

"Thanks Hagrid," said Arthur, patting the half-giant on the elbow as he passed. "I'm afraid we'll be seeing quite a bit of each other over the next few weeks."

"Why's tha' - oh." The brief smile Hagrid had sported while carrying out his official duty as Keeper of Keys fled before the realization that his next week or two would be filled with funerals. "Righ'. Well, I'll keep the flask topped up. Good luck a' the Burrow. And with - with the family." Arthur nodded his appreciation, then he and Bill strode warily through the gate, not entirely certain what to expect from the reporters.

"Arthur, have you been in contact with Harry Potter since the end of the battle?" Well, that didn't take long. He opened his mouth to respond, but before he could get anything out, more questions peppered him.

"As a long time Ministry employee, how do you feel about Kingsley Shacklebolt being named Minister?"

"You've been outspoken in your support of Muggles in the past, do you feel like this victory has validated those somewhat controversial values?"

"Would you care to comment on the rumours that your youngest son has been aiding Harry Potter all year on some sort of secret mission?"

Would he care to comment? What he wanted to do was disapparate immediately, but he was sure that Hagrid was still watching him. And he wanted to do _something_ useful. Time to put on the Ministry Official hat. He held up a hand and indicated that he'd be making a statement, then he waited for the clamour to die down.

"As most of you know, my name is Arthur Weasley. I am not here speaking on behalf of Hogwarts in any official capacity, though it is my understanding that Minerva McGonagall has assumed control of the school on an interim basis. Any inquiries made through the proper channels will, I think, be given their due consideration, though it may take a bit longer than usual to get an answer. She's quite busy just at the moment, as you can imagine." Several of the reporters chuckled politely at his attempt at humour, and Arthur relaxed a bit.

"Harry Potter is still up in the castle. He continues to work tirelessly to be a comfort and an inspiration to those of us who have lost loved ones in the last days and weeks and months. I can't thank him enough for what he has done - and continues to do - for my family. I can't answer specific questions about Harry and what he and his companions may or may not have been doing over the course of the last several months, mostly because I don't have any of those answers. He is likely the only person to know the whole story, and judging from personal experience with the boy - man rather, sorry Harry, I hope you'll forgive me when you read this tomorrow - asking the questions that you're asking is just going to make him clam up. He'll tell his story if and when he chooses to."

"I'd also like to extend my condolences to all those who lost friends and relatives last night. I count myself amongst your number, and right now the pain is - it's very real, isn't it? I h- hope that soon we may find solace in - in the fact that our loved ones d- died to give us an opportunity to live a more free life, but right now I just - I want my son back, and I-" He broke off, shrinking back from the reporters who were too busy jotting down everything he was saying to notice the tears that had started to run down his face.

He felt Bill shift uncomfortably beside him, then raise a hand up to place it on his shoulder once more. The world was going black, and the darkness was bearing down on him from all directions, suffocating him. He tried to gasp for a breath that would not come, then with a loud pop, his feet were back on solid ground and he could breathe again.

"Sorry, but I had to get us out of there." Bill's apology made Arthur look up, and he found that the reporters, the gate, Hagrid - all were gone, replaced by a cool evening breeze that chilled the tears on his cheeks and rustled through the leaves of the trees lining the path to the Burrow.

"Thanks," he mumbled shakily. He stood still for a moment as his legs wobbled beneath him. He didn't know if it was the apparition, the mental exhaustion or the grief, but his entire body felt as though it were made of jelly. "I suppose that wasn't such a good idea."

"You'd been doing fine until Fred came up." Bill grimaced, and Arthur could see that he had tears of his own shining in his unfocused eyes. "I think that's just going to be the way of it for a while."

"So it would seem." Arthur clapped a hand on Bill's shoulder, hoping to return the favour for the assistance he'd been rendered multiple times in the last fifteen minutes or so. He imagined he could feel the eclectric current flowing down his arm and through his fingers to Bill, and was gratified to see his son's eyes blink and refocus.

"Right. Thanks." Bill took a deep breath, holding it in a few seconds longer than he normally would. "Smells like home, anyway," he added after exhaling. "Should we see what it looks like?" Without waiting for a response, he turned briskly on his heel, and raised his wand to shoulder height out in front of him. Arthur could hear him muttering under his breath, and knew that the Curse-Breaker in his son had overridden the brother in him for the time being.

They proceeded slowly up the path, Bill sweeping his wand from one side of it to the other and back again in a ceaseless search for curses, runes or other enchantments. They paused once when the undergrowth just to their right had vibrated briefly under Bill's wand, but it wound up just being unfortunate timing on the part of a rabbit.

"Well, this is it," Bill whispered as they reached the final bend, "are you as nervous as I am?"

"It'll be all right. It has to be."

"I hope you're right."

To Arthur's immense relief, the Burrow was still standing. As he'd followed along behind Bill, he'd been gripped by the fear that it had been burned down - or destroyed through some other magical means - by Death Eaters disappointed in what they hadn't found once Ron's involvement with Harry was revealed. But there it was, right where they'd left it back over Easter.

Honestly, it looked a bit forlorn. It was leaning perhaps a few degrees more than it had when occupied, and why wouldn't it? It was the Weasley family magic that kept the thing upright in the first place. Not any specific spells of course, just the general magical atmosphere that a group of witches and wizards can generate under the right conditions. It would take work, but it was nothing that couldn't be fixed. Step one was making sure they could safely enter it.

"Hey, what time have you got?" asked Bill, beginning to walk towards the house once again. He continued to sweep side to side with his wand as he walked, and Arthur was careful to follow only in his direct wake as he looked down at his watch. It wouldn't do to stray off course at this point.

"It's nearly quarter to five. Still nothing popping up?"

"No, everything has been clean so far, but I expected that, to be honest. I think the front door is where we'll start to see some interesting stuff."

"Should I have my wand out? I feel rather silly just following along behind you."

"Yeah, go ahead and take it out," Bill replied, slowing to a stop as he came to the steps up onto the front porch. The Wellington boots that always sat there were lined up neatly on the second step, and something niggled at Arthur's brain as he looked at them. He drew his wand from his pocket, and stepped up alongside his son.

"There," he said, pointing to the boots with his wand. "I've never seen them look so tidy in my life."

"Excellent. That's why you're with me."

"I thought I was with you because the first rule of Curse-Breaking was to never work alone."

"There are no rules to Curse-Breaking," grinned Bill cheekily, and Arthur knew he'd been had. "Well, there is _one_ , I suppose. Break the damn curse." Arthur groaned.

"I bet you've used that on a girl more times than you can count, haven't you?"

"We-ell." Bill's voice vacillated on the vowel, and Arthur didn't need to look at him to know that he'd started blushing. All part of the Weasley curse, which, if his lineage was anything to go by, couldn't be broken.

"Congratulations, you just picked up your father." Arthur chuckled briefly, and looked over to see Bill still grinning at him. When he was happy like this, the scars that marred the left side of his face didn't seem so bad. "Don't worry, I won't tell Fleur. She can go on believing she's the only one to have been charmed by your bad boy Curse-Breaker persona."

"You don't give her enough credit," Bill sighed, "she saw right through me from the start. She's a perceptive one, Fleur is." He frowned and shook his head, then turned his attention back to the lined up boots. "I expect they're hiding something; perhaps a rune of some kind. A Death Eater probably arranged the boots there to keep it hidden from view, but in doing so inadvertently drew attention to it."

"You have a plan?"

"Well, I should be able to touch the Wellies, as the actual rune will likely affect the step, but if it's all the same, I'd like to vanish them just to be safe. Think you can handle that?" Rather than answer, Arthur just raised his wand.

" _Evanesco_." The boots were gone even before he finished the last of the flourish he'd used. Bill had been right, there was a bright green rune carved into the wood of the step right under where the Wellies had been. Arthur stared at it and tried to puzzle out its meaning, but he'd always been rubbish at Ancient Runes. "It looks like half a K," he offered stupidly. Bill pressed his lips together and shook his head. He looked rather pale.

"Kaun er barna bǫlvan; bǫl gørver nán fǫlvan."

"Is that one of those rune poems I was supposed to learn back in third year?" Bill nodded, but didn't otherwise respond. A feeling of trepidation was growing in Arthur's stomach, and it almost prevented him from asking the obvious next question. But he had to know. "What does it mean? The poem?" Bill looked over at him and narrowed his eyes as though trying to decide whether or not to share. "Come on, Bill. If you don't tell me, I'll just ask Hermione. Or Percy." It would take awhile for him to realize he could run this sort of thing by Percy again.

"I'm not sure I should, it's-"

"Bill, come on. I can take it."

"Fine," he sighed, lowering his wand to his side and turning to face Arthur, "It translates to: _Ulcer is fatal to children; death makes a corpse pale._ " The words hit Arthur with a physical weight that he hadn't been expecting, and he staggered backwards slightly.

"Does that - Is that why?" he stammered, once he'd regained his balance. "A curse on our house to kill kids?"

"All right, calm down."

"Calm down? Why in Merlin's name would I calm down? That thing could be the reason Fred is dead, and you're telling me to bloody calm down?"

"That's not the way it works, Dad. Not directly at least. This rune isn't powerful enough to have directly caused Fred's death. It's more of a curse of misfortune. Things that can go wrong, will go wrong. It's the ulcer, not the death. Furthermore, I don't think Fred ever stepped on that stair tread after you guys ran to Muriel's, so chances are, this rune has nothing to do with his death."

Arthur knew that what Bill was saying made sense, but that didn't make him feel any less angry. They had wanted to hurt his kids. No, not just wanted to, they had actually attempted to do it. He found himself shivering as he stewed in his thoughts. And Molly was upset about having killed one of these maniacs? Just at the moment, he'd have gladly murdered the whole lot of them.

"You good?" asked Bill softly. "I can isolate the rune, so it's not going to do anyone any harm. We can turn back if you'd like. We know the Burrow is here waiting for us, and we can take it slow if we need to."

"No, we need to do this now. If it gets drawn out, then your mother will start asking questions, and I won't be held liable for what she does when she finds out what was written there."

"You're looking rather murderous yourself, you know." Bill raised his wand and turned back toward the steps. As Arthur watched, he began the delicate task of isolating the rune by inscribing a circle around it with his wand and muttering something in Old Norwegian. He squatted down next to the steps, and leaned forward carefully to get a better look at the rune. "Oh you clever devil."

"Something wrong?" asked Arthur worriedly.

"No, not wrong. Just different." Bill began weaving his wand in and out of the space above the rune, his wand trailing a thin golden filament that was forming something like a spider's web. "Whoever left this here was pretty good with runes. This one has been modified slightly. I can't be sure, but it looks like it would have been possible to pass this curse along from person to person like an actual disease."

"They wanted it to get back to Harry." Arthur let out a low whistle at the audacity of it. "Can you imagine how badly it would have gone last night if half of the Order and Harry, Ron and Hermione had all been cursed with bad luck?"

"But they weren't, and now they won't be either," said Bill, standing back upright. "It's contained. We'll have to cut it out of there later, but that'll do for now."

"Front door next?"

"Yep, but let me do a sweep of the porch first." Bill mounted the steps, and stopped at the uppermost of them to sweep his wand tip across the width of the porch. "It's clean. Don't touch the door. I expect there to be another rune somewhere on the jamb. I'll take this side," he said pointing at the left side of the door with his wand. "You take that one. You're looking for any sort of marking that looks as though it was made deliberately. It doesn't need to be green like that last one was."

Arthur moved to the side of the door, and scanned it from top to bottom, looking for scratches or gouges that looked to make a pattern. But the door was well worn - like everything else at the Burrow - and he was having doubts about his ability to tell the difference between normal wear and tear and anything insidious.

"I'm clean over here," said Bill after a minute. "What've you got?"

"I'm - not entirely sure. There's a mark here that's a bit straighter than the scratches around it. Looks like it might be fresher too, but I really don't know what I'm looking at." Bill crossed in front of the door and stood at Arthur's shoulder as he pointed out the mark with his wand.

"Yeah, that's a scratch."

"Sorry."

"Don't be. Better safe than dead. That's rule number three of Curse-Breaking, by the way." Both of them chuckled, and Bill conjured a dragon hide glove that he donned before grabbing the doorknob of the front door. "Just to be safe."

The door wasn't locked, and it opened easily at Bill's gentle push. The two of them stood outside the door for a nearly a minute, looking into the dusty interior of the Burrow, trying to make sense of what they were seeing. It was a complete disaster. Not a single object in the entire house looked to be in the same location as it had when Arthur, Molly and the kids had had to make their run for it, and most of them were just strewn at random about the floor. The place had been searched, and roughly.

"Well we've got our work cut out for us," whispered Arthur after he'd finally processed the scene. "I don't think you really needed me to tell you about stuff that was out of place though."

"No, I suppose not." Bill raised his wand, and stepped gingerly across the threshold, immediately pivoting in the doorway to look above and behind him at the wall over the top of the door. "Doorway is clean, you can come in. Don't touch anything."

This was easier said than done. Even though it was still light outside, the shadows were growing longer, and given the way bits and pieces of Weasley family history were literally everywhere, Arthur was nearly afraid to move. "I feel like I'm going to step on something I shouldn't." he said, peering down into the shadows behind the couch for a safe place to put a foot.

"You can stay still if you'd like. Nothing glaring is showing up when I scan. I don't think we're in the clear, but I think we've already found the worst of it."

"What should I be looking for?"

"Well, there's runes obviously, as we've already discovered that whoever was here was quite skilled with them. Then there might be a poison hiding out in in something. Doesn't have to be edible either, just somewhere that your skin might eventually touch. Like on the poker for the fireplace. Actually, yeah. Why don't you go and check the fireplace. Inside the Floo pot, the key to wind the clock, stuff like that."

Well that sounded reasonable enough. Arthur confirmed to Bill that he would do exactly that, then stepped carefully over a broken oil lamp, a pair of smashed picture frames - he studiously avoided looking at the pictures themselves for fear of seeing Fred smiling and waving at him - and the upended chess board. All the little chessmen called up to him feebly from their scattered positions, asking to be set back upright upon the board. But they would have to wait. He'd been set a task, and as he'd discovered back at Hogwarts, having a task - no matter how simple - helped to take the edge off of his grief.

The mantle was bare. The pot of Floo powder, Molly's prized family clock, the photos and the bouquet from Bill and Fleur's wedding had all been swept aside and off of it, though whether in pursuit of something the Death Eaters may have thought hidden underneath them, or simply in anger, Arthur had no idea. He started with the clock, as he knew that Molly would want him to. He lit his wand tip and bent down over it so that he could get a good look.

The glass front of it was shattered, and several of the hands were bent and twisted. The bulk of them still pointed to 'school' though, so it appeared to at least be in something of a working order. His own hand, as well as that of Bill looked like they had attempted to make the sweep around to 'home,' but then gotten stuck on something on the mechanism inside. Doubtless it would need more than just a simple "reparo" to set it straight. He scanned the face and sides for runes, but failing to see any, he extinguished his wand then levitated the clock back onto the mantle where it belonged.

"There, it feels more like home already," he said with a nod at the clock. "You doing all right Bill?" he called. He turned slowly, making sure not to step on anything, and scanned the room looking for Bill, but he wasn't there.

"Yeah, I'm fine. Errol's not, though. Poor bird never stood a chance on his own." Arthur grimaced at the thought of old Errol trying to catch a rat to keep himself from starving. Yes, the poor bird had been doomed. "I'm giving the kitchen a once over. There's a whole lot of little jars in the pantry that we're going to have to go through one at a time. I've already found a few that are rather suspicious smelling, though that may have just been Ginny's cooking." Arthur scowled at the memory of a particularly gruesome roast that Ginny had been rather proud of. There had been lots of leftovers that night. "Hey, you got the time?"

"It's -" Arthur glanced down at his watch - "four minutes to five. You got a hot date or something? That's the second time you've wanted to know the time."

"Decidedly not hot, no," replied Bill, though he didn't elaborate any further. Arthur shrugged to himself and turned his attention to the Floo pot. It had a very narrow crack in one side apparently from when it had been shoved off the mantle and onto the floor. A small pile of the glittering silver powder had leaked through the crack and settled into the carpet. Molly would have been having kittens.

Arthur once again squatted down - groaning as his knees cracked - and thoroughly examined the exterior of the pot. There were no markings on it. He levitated the lid off- wait. Why was the lid on? Shouldn't it have come off in the fall? He leaned to one side gingerly so he could peer down inside the pot, but it was too dark to make anything out. Though he thought he may have seen something moving.

" _Lumos_!" With the end of his wand lit, the inside of the pot came alive with dozens of Flesh-Eating slugs writhing over top of one another. Arthur recoiled slightly at the sight, nearly falling backwards onto his arse. Well that would have been very unpleasant for someone unsuspecting to stick their hand into. He levitated the lid back onto the pot, then vanished the whole thing. Easier just to get a new one.

Arthur stood up, his knees once again creaking in protest, and felt his head spin at the sudden change of elevation. "Hey Bill, I found a nest of Flesh-Eating slugs in the Floo pot. Nice way to lose a hand." He looked toward the door of the kitchen expecting Bill's reply, but there was nothing but silence. "Bill? You all right?" No, he was wrong. It wasn't silent. From behind him, Arthur heard the whirring of the movement inside the mantle clock spin up, and the ratcheting sound of one of the hands spinning about. With his stomach dropping, Arthur turned to see that Bill's hand was now pointed at 'Mortal Danger.'

Arthur didn't stop to think, he took off like a snitch for the door to the kitchen, his wand at the ready. "Bill, where are you?" he called as he burst through the swinging door. "Talk to me!"

But Bill wouldn't be talking any time soon. Arthur's eyes immediately picked up the shock of red hair where his son was slumped up against the far wall of the kitchen. He looked unconscious.

 _Merlin, please let him just be unconscious._

" _Protego!"_ Less than two seconds after bursting through the door, Arthur had a shield up around himself, which proved fortuitous, as a spell bounced off of it not a moment later. He was almost relieved when he wheeled around to find the Death Eater standing behind the door with his wand poised for battle. Death Eaters he could deal with. A curse that had taken down a fully fledged Gringott's Curse-Breaker - not so much.

" _Stupefy_!" The Death Eater shouted, slashing the air with his wand as though it were a sword. " _Stupefy_! _Stupefy_! _Stupefy_!" Each of the stunners was accompanied by a wild slash, and the momentum of the wand sent the curses flying off to all corners of the kitchen. Arthur heard glass breaking and pots and pans clattering to the floor. But his shield held firm.

He wanted to make a run for it. Disapparate back to Hogwarts or the Ministry, then return with an army. But he couldn't leave Bill. There was no telling what would happen if he got left here alone with a Death Eater. So instead, he backed slowly down the length of the table, shuffling his feet while maintaining a defensive posture.

"Where's Harry Potter?" yelled the Death Eater, malice dripping from his voice. He was walking forward brazenly, his arms spread wide. "You give me the boy, and then you and your son won't be harmed!"

"Harry _is_ my son," spat Arthur, "you'll never get me to betray him. _Expelliarmus_!" Arthur watched as his shield flickered and then blinked out of existence, the act of taking the offensive requiring too much of his focus to keep it up. The Death Eater spun clear of the disarming spell with inches to spare, but his cloak caught on the corner of the table, causing him to stumble slightly and lower his wand.

Arthur knew he had to press his advantage, but he found himself at odds about how to do it. He'd wanted to kill every last Death Eater just minutes before, and had told Molly that he would have killed Bellatrix if given the opportunity. But now that the opportunity was here, he found that he just couldn't do it. " _Stupefy!"_ he shouted instead, and watched as the jet of blue light hurtled toward his opponent. It looked to strike him in the chest, but Arthur's momentary hesitation had allowed the Death Eater just enough time to prepare a defence, and the spell bounced off of a hastily erected shield charm.

"You've gone soft, Old Man," taunted the Death Eater, breathing heavily from behind his shield. "And you're forgetting to watch your back." He motioned with his wand to a spot behind Arthur.

"Oh no, I'm not falling for that one. _Stupefy!"_ Predictably, the spell bounced off of the Death Eater's shield, but Arthur thought he saw it flicker slightly. He still had the upper hand.

"Fine, have it your way," this voice - a woman's - came from behind him, and Arthur did the only thing he could. He dropped to the floor, just as a spell hurtled through the space he'd been in an instant prior. He could feel the force of it blowing around what little hair he had left.

" _Incarcerous_!" grunted the first Death Eater, and Arthur rolled sideways under the table just in time to avoid getting bound up. He was in a dire situation now, and he knew it. The only way out was to get to Bill somehow and disapparate with him.

" _Reducto_!" shouted the female Death Eater, and the table over Arthur gave a great groan and collapsed on top of him, pinning his legs in place. Arthur wordlessly levitated the half of the table on his legs, then banished it in the direction of the first Death Eater. He heard a satisfying crunch as the table connected.

He rolled the rest of the way under the remains of his cover, and began crawling up the far side of the table. He couldn't be more than fifteen feet from Bill at this point, and, realizing that he might not get as good an opportunity given that one Death Eater was temporarily dealing with the after effects of being hit with a table, he decided that he needed to make his break for it. He shot a stunning spell over his shoulder at random to give the female Death Eater something to think about, then dragged himself to his feet and began running across the remaining gap to Bill.

Ten feet. Nearly there. Five feet. But just as Arthur was about to make a dive for Bill's arm, something caught his right ankle and sent him sprawling headlong into the wall.

"Ha! Arthur Weasley, done in by a trip jinx!" crowed the female Death Eater, conjuring ropes and using them to bind Arthur before he'd had a chance to clear his head. There were bright lights flashing in front of his eyes, and he couldn't move his neck to the right at all.

"Please," Arthur whimpered, "please, just let Bill go. I'll do what you want."

"Well you're right about that, anyway. _Imperio!"_

All the pain Arthur was in began to melt away. Gone were the flashing lights, gone was the cramp in his neck, and gone were all thoughts of-

 _Fred, no!_

Arthur fought to hold on to the pain of losing his son, the only remaining thread keeping his mind his own. Fred falling to the floor of a corridor motionless, the interminable wait for him to come back, the pain of the loop beginning again. But each time through the loop the pain lessened as Arthur grew inured and numb to it.

And finally there was no pain at all.

* * *

 **Author's Note:** Happy New Year! I hope everyone had a safe and enjoyable holiday season. So... what do you think? Please, if it wouldn't be too much trouble, could you please leave a review and let me know that I'm either on to something or way off track. I'm perfectly fine with hearing either, so don't pull any punches.

And as always, thanks for reading!


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